Stretched opened in December 2024 and is the first of its kind in Scotland. We speak to owner Craig McHugh who also designed the programme on the physical benefits of assisted stretching and why it has proved so popular.
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00:00Hello, so we are doing something very exciting today here in Glasgow.
00:04We are going for an assisted stretch, a nice wellness activity.
00:08So the studio is located in Woodlands in the West End.
00:12It's really easy to get to, you can walk up from town like I'm doing,
00:16just along Sunky Hall Street, or you can get the subway to St George's Cross.
00:20They open in December, it's the first of its kind in Scotland.
00:24So we're going to go and have an assisted stretch and tell you all about it.
00:28So, what is Stretched?
00:30So Stretched is a unique wellness offering,
00:34where when you arrive at the studio, one of our stretch therapists
00:38will assess how you move, assess your mobility,
00:42and then from there they will stretch your full body from your head to your toe.
00:46So my background is physiotherapy, so I'm a physiotherapist.
00:50I own physiotherapy clinics, and what happens often when people
00:54attend the clinic, they'll tell us that they don't stretch enough,
00:58they don't do enough mobility, and then at the end, when we're discharging them,
01:02we'll encourage them to do stretching, mobility, yoga, pilates,
01:06and more often than not they don't because they don't find time, or they just forget to do it.
01:10So it was a bit of a light bulb moment when I thought, maybe this is something that's missing
01:14within the wellness industry, and you don't necessarily need to be injured,
01:18and we can fill the gap in by doing some nice one-on-one assisted stretching.
01:22People come in initially for the physical benefits of it,
01:26stretching out your body, increasing range of motion and flexibility,
01:30but I think what I probably notice the most with people when they come in here is
01:34how instant that feeling of just relaxation, like a weight has been
01:38lifted off their shoulders, and you can see that from especially the 50-minute stretches
01:42when people initially come in to when they leave, it's just completely de-stressed for them,
01:46which is amazing to hear that, to give people that back to that I suppose,
01:50and make a difference in their life.
01:52All of our stretch therapists here have a background in how the body moves,
01:56so they're professional dancers, yoga instructors, massage therapists,
02:00so I created what's called Stretch Academy,
02:04so I wrote the course and got it accredited by a college,
02:08and then we teach the course in-house,
02:12so everyone's trained to the same standards,
02:16and then in the end they have to do 20 hours on models,
02:20and then an exam, so they're all accredited in one-on-one assisted stretching,
02:24so having everyone on the same level and the same training was really important for us,
02:28so now we can do it all in-house, which is pretty unique.
02:32So I honestly feel amazing right now, I feel incredible,
02:36I've never done anything like that before, I understand a lot more
02:40about my own mobility as well, which is always a good thing,
02:44it allows me to work farther and take on that information
02:48to make sure I'm fit and healthy, so yeah, fantastic,
02:52I'll definitely be back.