Is Stretching Really That Important?
February 15th, 2007The debate on whether stretching is beneficial to the muscles and the body still rages on. Some studies suggest that stretching before or after exercise has no bearing on performance, injury prevention or flexibility. Other studies advocate stretching as being paramount in relation to better performance, reducing the risk of injury and allowing greater flexibility by elongating the muscle. So what is the verdict, is it worth doing or just a waste of time? Here’s what I personally think about stretching from my experience.
After 20 years of weight training and numerous injuries to muscles all over my body, especially in my early years, I now do a light stretch and thorough warm up before every weight or cardio session. I have found that it not only feels good to get some blood pumping through the areas of my body I am about to train but it seems to be a factor in cutting down the recovery period after my workouts. After a thorough stretch and warm up by slowly working my muscles with light weights before I hit the heavier weights I seem to feel less sore for the next day or so after my workout than if I don’t stretch much beforehand.
Working in the gym each day I see so many exercisers walk into the weight room and start loading up the bar and blasting away on their maximum weight from the very first set. On countless occasions I have witnessed torn muscles and numerous ligament and tendon injuries. Having suffered from these myself, it was almost always after not stretching or warming up properly or not at all. Nowadays it is an automatic part of my pre workout routine. If I didn’t have time to do an adequate stretch and warm up before my training session I would reschedule it for another time. As a result I rarely ever get injuries and am still pushing the big weights on the days I go heavy. If I’m working on extremely heavy weights on that particular day I will spend even longer warming up to my heaviest weight, giving the muscles a good stretch between sets and completing each rep with a full range of motion. This means allowing the muscle to fully elongate and then fully contract for every rep of each set. Sometimes when training with your heaviest weights, on the last couple of reps you may not be able to complete a full rep but for most sets and always during your warm up phase you should complete a full range of motion.
Stretching is not only important in my opinion before and during weight sessions, it is also of benefit before any type of aerobic or cardiovascular workout. It helps by increasing the circulation of blood into the muscles which allows your muscles to elongate as much as one and a half times their relaxed size. Allowing more blood into the muscle before periods of exercise minimizes the chance of injury during your training and like I mentioned before, decreases your recovery time after the workout. This allows you the opportunity to train effectively more often as your muscles and tendons become accustomed to more intense and frequent exercise.
When I wake up every morning I seem to unconsciously stretch my body out all sorts of directions, stretching my arms out fully or bringing my legs up to my chest to give my lower back a good stretch among other stretching movements. I do this because it feels good and helps me wake up perhaps by helping to bring blood to parts of my body after I have been sleeping in certain positions. So one of the reasons I believe stretching is beneficial to me is because it makes me feel better and if it instinctively feels good, it probably is.
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July 12th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
I think that you can feel if something is good for you or not. Like when you eat a big greasy fry-up, afterwards you feel heavy and a bit dirty, compared to eating a plate of mixed boiled vegetables, which makes you feel a lot cleaner.
Stretching for me makes me feel very relaxed afterwards. It feels good for me. My body knows what is good and what is not, and I trust what my body tells me.