Pre-Exercise Stretching Is Killing Your Workout
 

Seems that most everything your high school gym teacher told you is wrong. Well, at least when it comes to all that start-of-the-class stretching.

A recent spate of studies shows that when it comes to warming up before exercising, phys ed instructors didn't do us any favors by having us to go through a series of calf extensions, hurdler's stretches and the like.

Story here...

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/pre...ry?id=11835944

I agree with the very first comment on it:

"The study does not look at all at the effects on tendons - where the muscles attach to bones - which is where the major problems occur that runners suffer. I had one Achilles tendon surgically repaired and the other slowly healed on it own. To this day, if I do NOT stretch, I get tendonitis in that self-healed tendon. Additionally, most people do NOT stretch correctly. You should take a slow jog first. When I coached high school track, cross country, or softball athletes (up to 2002) I had them run SLOWLY over a half mile. If they ran too fast, they were made to do it again. THEN, with the muscles relaxed, slow, static stretches are done. You do not FORCE your body to stretch, you simply go as far as the body wants you to go in a relaxed manner and hold it for at least 15 seconds. I once taught my cross country kids the first steps of Tai Chi (which I had learned on a trip to China that summer) and began stretches with that, but the kids rebelled saying the other teams thought they were weird! If you travel through China, you see the Chinese doing Tai Chi and similar exercises every morning. Even on Yangtze River Cruise, as we did our pre-breakfast exercises on the deck of our ship we passed small towns where hundreds of people in many groups had gathered alongside the river to do their exercises. Most Chinese don't make a lot of money and the exercises are part of their PREVENTIVE medicine. Stretching does the same for us. Yes, there may be microtears in some muscles, but they heal quickly and prevent accumulations of slow-healing microtears in the tendons. And the idea that it requires 5% more energy to do the same exercise than without a warmup is ridiculous - that much muscle damage would require a medical visit. More research needs to be done."

Yeah, interesting stuff. There are also studies out that show you are more likely to get injured if you stretch before working out.

wow....there has to be thought on both side of that...going out cold is never good...but i agree with the basic premise that over stretching will eat into your workout/basketball game/ run etc
eh...i just hope not to get injured each time i go out there

I read something about that before. In my experience I gave up leg stretches because my hip joints complained, but I still like to keep flexibility, be able to touch my toes etc I do wait until I've warmed up a good bit before stretching though, and do it gently. Stretches are undoubtedly good for RSI prevention/control

My trainer has been saying the same thing.

i dunno - but i am pretty sure (from experience) that it's not a good idea to go from 0 to 100 with cold muscles

You're supposed to WARM the muscles first. A few minutes of cardio.

THEN you stretch them a little bit once they are warmed up.

Then you hit the weights.

Or...if you are like me...you are short on time and you run into the gym. Hit the heavy weight on the particular body part you're working that day and then you're out of there in about 45 minutes with no cardio or stretching. heh-heh

warming and stretching are 2 differents things

i warm up with light sets, no stretching on training days but i do have a stretch only day.

I stretch for at least 15 minutes before I start exercising. Works for me.

if you are exercising to lose weight, stretching makes sense, according to the article:

The researchers found that when the runners stretched before the workout, they burned, on average, 5 percent more calories during the run than when they didn't stretch.