Stretching Before Exercise - Say No To Static Stretching!
By Ed Clements
Please feel free to replublish muscle-health-fitness.com articles. You MUST, however, include the the paragraph marked * at the bottom of this page. I always remember, when at school, having to go through the age old routine of everybody gathering round into a circle and stretching each muscle for 7 to 10 seconds before every training session and sports match.
At the time I didn't find it that bad - nobody except the suck-ups really bothered to do the stretches properly, and everybody else just used the time as a chance to joke around before we had to do pyramids and other draining routines.
Static stretching before exercise will hurt your sporting performance!
Keep up to date on the latest research on strength training and hormone optimisation, subscribe to the 'Muscle-health-fitness Ezine newsletter’. Subscribe and immediately receive four excellent free eBooks containing high quality information on building muscle and burning fat! For more information on accessing my free eBook downloads page click here. After having read the numerous studies done on the relationahsip between static stretching before exercise and performance levels, I'm actually pretty pleased that I never took my coaches' advise to stretch before exercise that seriously… Doing a standard static hamstring stretch has been shown to decrease the eccentric strength of that muscle for 60 minutes following the stretch!(1) If you consider a half of a soccer or rugby match is 45 minutes, and players are told to stretch before the game and again during the half time break, then if you follow this traditional stretching advise you’re pointlessly cutting your dynamic power for an entire game!(1)
In their publication ‘The influence of stretching and warm-up exercises on Achilles tendon reflex activity’ Rosenbaum and Hennig demonstrated that by statically stretching the Achilles tendon peak force falls by 5 percent and the speed of force production falls by 8 percent.(2) Like with the hamstring stretch, ten years ago it would have been considered unthinkable to pass on stretching the Achilles - now we know better!
You’re probably getting the general idea from the above two examples that static stretching exercises actually cut your explosive muscle power – this is exactly what a guy called Knudson showed in his research: The peak vertical velocity produced by athletes doing the vertical jump was reduced in most athletes by statically stretching their calfs, hamstrings and quadriceps for 15 seconds.(3) Coupled with this loss of explosive power, it has been shown that standard static stretching routines worsen the specific coordination needed to perform explosive movements. This lack of functional coordination would probably mean the performance lowering effects of static stretching would be greater in a high paced sports environment than in a slightly artificial test like the vertical jump.
It has been shown that, even though static stretches can improve your performance at doing that particular stretch, this doesn’t translate into better flexibility on the sports field. This is hardly surprising really given that your nervous system is largely responsible for how flexible you can become at a particular movement. By statically stretching a muscle every day you are teaching your nervous system to make that muscle better at slowly lengthening – unless your competing at how far past your toes you can reach, this isn’t going to help you. To train your nervous system to make your muscles more flexible at performing the dynamic movements your sport requires you need to practise similar dynamic movements, in a controlled manner, until you become better at doing these movements – you all know this as dynamic stretching! ________________________________________ At this point you might be thinking that coaches normally encourage static stretching before exercise to prevent injuries, not just to improve performance. Fair point, but static stretches just don’t seem to prevent injuries when done before exercise… Rod Pope, an Australian army physiotherapist, made a strong case that passive stretching routines should be completely discarded as a means of preventing injuries. Rod monitored over 2600 army recruits in randomised, controlled trials for a one year period.(4) Rod's Results: Some recruits stretched certain leg muscles before exercise and others did not, but the injury rate stayed the same. Pope is quoted as saying, ‘We were able to rule out quite a small effect of stretching (on injury risk). 'Stretching was assumed to work in preventing injury, but there was no evidence to suggest it did’. He concludes by saying, ‘We are telling the army no longer to stretch… but it's a long tradition and tradition dies hard.' Do we want to be more statically flexible? Completely aside from whether or not static stretches can help your sporting flexibility, there are a lot of instances where you would not want to become more flexible: Researchers at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma found that ‘decreased flexibility has been associated with increased in-line running and walking economy. Increased stiffness may be associated with increased isometric and concentric force generation, and muscle energy storage may be best manifested by closely matching muscle stiffness to the frequency of movement in stretch-shorten type contractions.’ One classic example of a sport where it isn't generally considered a good idea to increase flexibility is power lifting. Based on the above results, it seems that it would be pointless to do any form of flexibility work before an in-line running or walking training session or competition, or as part of a power lifting training program. Some of you might be willing to accept slightly lower performance levels for a long injury free career – but in the same study the researchers pointed out that: ‘There is no scientifically based prescription for flexibility training and no conclusive statements can be made about the relationship of flexibility to athletic injury.’(5) It seems there is a fairly strong case that flexibility isn’t actually related to injury susceptibility. It might be that other factors such as the increased heart rate, blood flow to the muscles etc. that are generated by a good warm up are what helps athletes to perform better afterwards. I’m not saying that you can’t improve your chances of avoiding injury if you perform a good set of dynamic stretches before exercise. I personally would recommend this, but I’m less convinced than I used to be about the benefits of flexibility work for raising sporting performance and cutting injury risk after seeing the lack of solid evidence supporting this idea.
So should you do your static stretching after exercise then? A lot of people upon hearing the news that static stretching before exercise isn’t a good thing seem to have just assumed that you should still go through the old boring stretching routine after exercise. Well, I guess this would be better than static stretching before exercise as it won’t damage your performance, but the explanations you will find as to how static stretching after exercise will help you aren’t at all convincing. As far as I can find these are the given reasons why you would passively stretch after exercise: 1) Relax muscles, realign muscle fibres and re-establish a normal range of motion. 2) Aid in disposal of waste products such as lactic acid. 3) Reduce the level of adrenaline in the blood. 4) Allow your heart rate to return to normal. 5) Reduce the potential for D.O.M.S. (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Again, there is no evidence that passive stretching achieves these goals. Let’s look at why these claims should probably be ignored: 1) You might find static stretching relaxing, but the movements you are doing do not correspond to many real life or sporting activities at all. I’m sure you’ll agree that statically stretching your calfs doesn’t make walking more comfortable if your really sore after a hard training session. In terms of realigning muscle fibres and re-establishing a normal range of motion the same argument as above applies. Gentle real life activities will gradually get your muscles back to their normal state after exercise. How can the ‘normal’ range for muscle fibres be when they are unnaturally elongated as in a static stretch? Weird… 2) A gentle jog would be the best way to get rid of excess lactic acid that has built up in the muscles during exercise– you could pick your knees up, flick your heals and jog side to side etc. to loosen off particular muscle groups that will probably have been worked hard in your training or game. In fact, there is a debate currently going on in some yoga circles as to whether long static stretches create too much lactic acid in the muscles - so it’s hardly likely that static stretches help to release lactic acid after exercise! 3) This benefit of static stretching, which is often quoted, is just ridiculous… I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t lower your adrenaline levels after exercise, but you don’t need to stand around getting cold whilst you stretch your muscles to do this. There are unlimited options that would be equally good, if not better, than static stretching for lowering adrenaline levels. Examples: you could take a short walk, you could sit down, meditate, have a cigar (maybe not). 4) This is similarly stupid… you’re heart rate would return to normal more quickly if you sat down and did absolutely nothing than if you stand around stretching. 5) In a systematic review of five moderate studies performed on the effects of stretching before exercise and stretching after exercise on muscle soreness, incidence of injury and athletic performance, the researchers did not find that static stretching helped to prevent muscle soreness: ‘Stretching before or after exercising does not confer protection from muscle soreness. Stretching before exercising does not seem to confer a practically useful reduction in the risk of injury, but the generality of this finding needs testing. Insufficient research has been done with which to determine the effects of stretching on sporting performance.’(6) In terms of increased flexibility, some proponents of static stretching are now suggesting that you don’t do your stretching when your muscles are warm as the muscles will elongate and then return to their normal shape. Apparently it is better to stretch when muscles are cold if you want to actually increase the length of the muscle. But I’ve got to stress again here that there is no evidence that increasing the length of your muscles in the way you do with static stretching will help your sporting performance or help to keep you injury free. Final Note: If you, like me, find static stretching before exercise sessions pretty boring, I hope that this article will give you the confidence to cut these out-of-date practises from your pre and post match/ training routines. The evidence suggests that static stretching before exercise will actually worsen your performance at most sports and static stretching after training will do absolutely nothing, good or bad (except waste your time). Good advise would probably be to substitute the time you spend on static stretches at the moment for a set of dynamic stretches. Dynamic stretching, unlike static stretching, is sport specific and many coaches will strongly attest to it lessening the injury rates in their squads. Whether or not these reduced injury rates are due to better flexibility from dynamic stretches or from other factors such as the increased body and muscle temperature, stimulation of the nervous system that dynamic stretches achieve is another question altogether though… * Ed Clements, creator of muscle-health-fitness.com, is an independent health and fitness writer who specialises in dietary, supplementation and weights training advice for improving body composition and hormone balance.
Useful Sites:
References and Footnotes (1)Gleim & McHugh (1997), 'Flexibility and its effects on sports injury and performance,' Sports Medicine, 24(5), pp. 289-299. |
Buy Highest Potency Tongkat Ali!
Most Tongkat Ali suppliers sell products that are both too poor quality and too weak to significantly raise testosterone levels.
Many people achieve fantastic muscle and strength gain results from taking high quality Tongkat Ali extract at a proper dosage, not to mention ramping up their sex drive.
60 day 100% money back guarantee!