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Reasons Not to Stretch

well.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#51

Post by smsm42 »

prakster wrote: post #13
scarmig wrote: post #10

Earlier 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' :-)

Do they have good teeth?

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#52

Post by tomlu »

ajays wrote: post #30

The title is misleading, to say the least. I occasionally suffer from lower back pain. From experience, tight hamstrings seem to be the cause. If I regularly stretch my hamstrings, I am without back problems. If I stop stretching, then, after a few months, I'll suddenly develop severe back pain. It's happened 3 times already, so I'm seeing a pattern. So I guess my point is: stretching can help in other areas; it just…

Your hamstrings are too short and pull on your lower back. To fix short muscles stretching is great. If your muscles aren't already short then stretching isn't very useful.

(Post-workout stretching can help prevent your muscles from ever becoming short)

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#53

Post by vidarh »

cynicalkane wrote: post #14
guylhem wrote: post #2

It 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.

You definitively want your muscles to be tight for weight lifting. But you also want the flexibility to do the full range of motion.

What you absolutely don't want is to stretch before the exercise to loosen up the muscle - you're not suddenly going to gain much extra range of motion, but you will reduce your ability to control the movement.

Stretching after (our outside of) your regular workouts, on the other hand, can be useful.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#54

Post by vidarh »

bcbrown wrote: post #34
cynicalkane wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do powerlifting, though not competitively, and I can't agree with you that the best way of acquiring the flexibility is to do the movements. I struggled for nearly a year to improve my depth on my squats and deadlifts that way.

It took in between my workouts. I increased my squats from a paltry 2/3 of my body weight and reduced range of motion to 1.5x my body weight at full range of motion in 6 months from I started doing the stretches, after having been stuck without any improvement for many months. I've kept increasing since.

I don't doubt that doing the movements may work for some, especially if you have reasonable flexibility to start with, but it certainly didn't work for me, or at least did not give noticeable results over a very long period of time, whereas it took less than 2 weeks from I started doing my stretches until I saw substantial improvements.

I absolutely agree with you that pre-exercise stretches is not recommended for lifting weights, but that does not mean stretches are not useful.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#55

Post by fuzionmonkey »

m_gloeckl wrote: post #50

Being a fairly competitive runner in my spare time (38:40 10k, 1:26 half marathon), I'd like to weigh in: There are two different kinds of flexibility involved in running or exercise in general. 1) Static flexibility: Responsible for your ability to bend over and reach down to your toes. 2) Dynamic flexibility: Remember those drills where you try to kick your heel as high as possible? From standing, bringing up your…

I thought this was well understood for a while now.

Has anyone advocated static stretching prior to exercise or sports in recent times? I'm in college now, but ever since I can remember, dynamic warmups were done, and static stretching was only post-exercise.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#56

Post by vidarh »

aashaykumar92 wrote: post #17

Like a couple people have said, this is nothing new--it's an affirmation at most. But what also is missing is that it is completely reliant on the individual. Warmups are RELATIVE to YOU, the athlete. I played 3 varsity sports--soccer, swimming, and track--throughout my 4 years of high school but made sure that I did a dynamic stretch of MY OWN before getting into any stretching/exercise with the rest of my team. I s…

Warmup and stretching are orthogonal to each other. Warmup is important, stretches pre-exercise are not and may be harmful in terms of injury risk for that workout. Doing dynamic stretches overall is good improving your flexibility, though. Overall you might very well have done yourself more good than harm, but you'd likely do yourself even more good by warming up a different way and doing your dynamic stretches at a different time.

"Getting your muscles moving" does not require a stretch, you can keep your movements well away from pushing your range of motion.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#57

Post by marcuspovey »

Dynamic before, good long stretch after (mainly because it feels good). Stretching to increase flexibility is also a little misleading, everyone at every age is flexible, but we have inbuilt safeguards where our brain sets a maximum range of movement and tells the muscles to restrict movement beyond that. When you stretch to increase flexibility what you're actually doing is resetting the brain's idea of what's normal rather than stretching muscles or tendons.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#58

Post by Charlesmigli »

marcuspovey wrote: post #57

Dynamic before, good long stretch after (mainly because it feels good). Stretching to increase flexibility is also a little misleading, everyone at every age is flexible, but we have inbuilt safeguards where our brain sets a maximum range of movement and tells the muscles to restrict movement beyond that. When you stretch to increase flexibility what you're actually doing is resetting the brain's idea of what's norma…

Yes that's indeed the conclusion of the article that one should prefer dynamic warm up instead of static stretching. For long efforts it says that post stretching help to recover (The other takeaways of the article can be found here https://tldr.io/tldrs/515d3491207be0f11e0007bf/reasons-not-t...)

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#59

Post by hv23 »

vidarh wrote: post #54
bcbrown wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do powerlifting, though not competitively, and I can't agree with you that the best way of acquiring the flexibility is to do the movements. I struggled for nearly a year to improve my depth on my squats and deadlifts that way. It took in between my workouts. I increased my squats from a paltry 2/3 of my body weight and reduced range of motion to 1.5x my body weight at full range of motion in 6 months from I starte…

Can I ask specifically what kind of dynamic stretching you were doing? I have chronically tight hips that leave me unable to perform "adequate" squats - poor range of motion and balance on the squats, and lack of power. I'd love any tips you have to offer.

Re: Reasons Not to Stretch

#60

Post by aneth4 »

This is irresponsibly poorly presented. Pre-exercise stretching doesn't reduce the chance of injury and slightly reduces performance of muscles. Not terribly surprising.

Stretching for fitness and flexibility - e.g. yoga - is essential.

Do yoga. Don't do yoga before you play hockey.

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