My wife learned about the book Natural Flexibility
http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Flexibility-Risk-Free-Alternat...
by Charles Kenny, M.D., and has found it helpful for maintaining injury-free flexibility for a variety of exercises.
Reasons Not to Stretch
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... has flossing been shown to be useful for human health? ETA: quick Google, found one meta-study. Results: "Trials were of poor quality and conclusions must be viewed as unreliable. The review showed that people who brush and floss regularly have less gum bleeding compared to toothbrushing alone. There was weak, very unreliable evidence of a possible small reduction in plaque. There was no information on other…
Can't speak for the rest of the world, but at least 99% of India doesn't floss. Just sayin' :-)
Despite the American oral fixation, flossing is not all that popular over here. The guilt about not flossing is, however, huge.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#33It is nothing new, it was suspected for a while by many studies. Personally I do not practice stretching. It initially started as an experiment - as in "if I don't stretch I should get hurt ?", "ok I want to test this and see precisely how much!", ie to try to evaluate the marginal value of stretching. So far I have yet to see a negative consequence of not stretching (ie increased risk of injury, even if anecdotal ex…
Many exercises are simply not safe if your muscles are tight or you lack the flexibility to do them properly. Swimming, weight lifting, most sports come immediately to mind.
I'd agree that there are certain movements that you really don't want to attempt without a certain amount of prerequisite flexibility, which often requires a certain amount of static stretching to achieve.
However, overall flexibility seems to be a longer term condition than just pre-workout stuff. Stretching post-workout or daily but disconnected from pre-strenuous exercise seems to make you more limber/capable of movements that require more flexibility to safely/correctly do. In particular, most of the serious dancers I know stretch(ed) a huge amount (often daily) and also did fairly strenuous dance (often daily), but the static stretching and actual exercise were highly removed from each other. There are also a lot of movements in most types of dance that are either impossible or dangerous without a certain amount of prerequisite flexibility.
Pre-workout warmups are also seem important for avoiding injury: if your muscles are tight/tense and you throw yourself into a strenuous exercise, my experience and everything I've heard says you're going to have a bad time. From personal experience, but every time I've injured/hurt my muscles it was during exercise where I hadn't warmed up or had done a bare minimum of warmup.
Source: Mainly personal experience and what I've seen as a former competitive swimmer (high school varsity, butterfly, fairly serious), former dancer (modern; not serious, but I know some people who were part of larger dance companies), and someone who is currently involved in fairly intense bodyweight strength training (think gymnastic conditioning).
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#34It is nothing new, it was suspected for a while by many studies. Personally I do not practice stretching. It initially started as an experiment - as in "if I don't stretch I should get hurt ?", "ok I want to test this and see precisely how much!", ie to try to evaluate the marginal value of stretching. So far I have yet to see a negative consequence of not stretching (ie increased risk of injury, even if anecdotal ex…
Many exercises are simply not safe if your muscles are tight or you lack the flexibility to do them properly. Swimming, weight lifting, most sports come immediately to mind.
I'm a competitive powerlifter. Your statement isn't quite true. The best way to acquire the flexibility for weightlifting movements is to perform those movements. If you aren't flexible enough to squat to the correct depth, the solution is to squat as deep as you can, and let that serve as the stretch.
The accepted wisdom amongst my crowd is that the appropriate warmup prep is some dynamic movement to raise the body temperature, like rowing or biking, followed by practicing a given movement at progressively higher weights, until you are ready for the work sets.
I've never heard a weightlifter recommend static stretching before training.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#35One caveat for those who are pushing the big 5-O (and trust me, sooner or later, you all will be): the title of the article should have been "Reasons Not to Stretch before Exercise." Stretching for the purpose of counteracting the loss of elasticity of the tendons that comes with age is a different matter. It's like "the other flossing": it's well-known that it should be done, but compliance is spotty.
I'd phrase it slightly different. Working through the full range of motion is important for avoiding loss of range of motion. That doesn't have to mean static stretching.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#36It's worth looking at "active isolated stretching" for an approach that is well-regarded in distance running circles and is an alternative to the "static stretching" that this article is referencing: http://www.runnersworld.com/injury-treatment/active-isolated... . It's easy to learn and is a sort of middle ground between stretching and the active warmup suggested by the article.
Stretching is absolutely important in certain situations -- context matters. E.g. if you sit all day and have back pain, in general you should be doing psoas (hip flexor) stretches, and should not be doing back stretches. The article is mostly right that you should stick with light stretching and exercises on a daily basis, but for tightness and imbalances that need to be actively corrected, stretching is the way to go.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#37I used to think stretching was stupid. Then I got old. Now I find that stretching reduces soreness the next day after a run. Certainly others have had the same experience?
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#38Title is misleading. The article's main focus is on pre-workout stretching. I run several times a week, sometimes up to 20km at once and post-run stretching is most definitely a must-have.
Have a cite? This article indeed concentrates on pre-exercise stretching, but I've heard similar things about post-exercise.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#39Ctrl-F injury So they ignored the single reason that stretching is recommended, and found that stretching has other side-effects. Thanks, I guess?
Read more carefully.
> ...without substantially reducing people's chances of hurting themselves.
Re: Reasons Not to Stretch
#40I wonder how much of this effect (muscles weaker after stretching) is because stretching tires the muscles, as it will certainly require energy to execute a static for a minute or so. If the effect is similar to other forms of muscle use, it would be unsurprising. If it weakens muscles in a unique way, that seems more interesting.
I stretch quite a bit because my muscles get tighter over the time, in particular from working at the computer.
My dog stretches upon returning to activity from rest. A form of dynamic stretching, just a few seconds.