Stretching and prevention of injury

[Steve Forman]

Recently it was suggested to me that I should stretch my muscles prior to workouts as a form of warming up and in order to prevent injury. I found this strange and awkward but I could not put into words. So in reading I found two articles. Steven Lowes and another. Here they are: I dont believe that stretching is a form of warming up, and that joint mobility is far more important. I am more convinced that static stretching prior workout can cause injury in certain types of movements. What else am I missing here??

http://saveyourself.ca/articles/stretching.php

http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2009/0...ic-stretching/

[Steven Low]

Dynamic stretching is a good way of joint warmup. Static stretching doesn't really warm up the joints and is not proven to reduce injury during workouts.

Now, if you have mobility issues obviously you may need to address this with flexibility or mobility work. Like I said in the article to perform exercises with good technique they may need to stretch at the expensive of a small amount of strength/power output.

On the other hand, if you don't need to do this then do your joint/mobility warmups. Then static stretch after if you're getting tight.

There's nothing that hard about I don't think? If you're still confused uhh ask your Q a diferent way?

[Steve Forman]

Thanks Steven,

Nothing hard about it, I agree. I wanted to make sure that I wasnt missing something about stretching. I was told it would prevent injury! From the reading that doesnt sound right.

[Allen Yeh]

Depends on who you ask. Sucks huh?

In all seriousness, statis stretching prior to training should be limited in duration but can be part of a well thought out warmup. If you look at Joe Defranco's Agile 8 and Simple 6 warmups those both include some static stretching however it limits most movements to 45 seconds per bodypart. Eric Cressey in his book Maximum Strength included static stretching not to exceed 20 second per movement in his warmups.

[Brandon Oto]

I need some static stretching before workout to loosen up my quads and glutes, or I have issues.

[Steve Forman]

Originally Posted by Steven Low

Dynamic stretching is a good way of joint warmup. Static stretching doesn't really warm up the joints and is not proven to reduce injury during workouts.

Now, if you have mobility issues obviously you may need to address this with flexibility or mobility work. Like I said in the article to perform exercises with good technique they may need to stretch at the expensive of a small amount of strength/power output.

On the other hand, if you don't need to do this then do your joint/mobility warmups. Then static stretch after if you're getting tight.

There's nothing that hard about I don't think? If you're still confused uhh ask your Q a diferent way?

why or How does static stretching decrease power or strength output?

[Steven Low]

It's only about like 3-5% and only for like 15-30 minutes after stretching. Or one or two sets as discussed in one of Lyle's previous articles.

Basically, stretching out the muscle spindles makes them "more unresponsive" to changes in muscle length thus decreasing stretch-shorten cycle activity during strength/power movements.

The same may be true of golgi tendon organs, but I'm not sure about that one.