Stretching - Anyone do it?

tranceaddict

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i as advised to stretch post-workout as it stimulates hypertophy and to stretch on off-days?


something along the lines that u dont want ur muscle fibers to shrink ??
 
EatMeat

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i do lots of stretching after and on off days.

Flexibility is not something that you want to lose when you can help it and stretching does help your muscle as it attempts to grow larger.

Best time to stretch is post workout while you are nice and pumped.
 
RenegadeRows

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I practice the 'stretchin arts'.

Post workout feels great, elongates the muscles, lactic acid, etc.

Stretching on off days is active recovery, blood flows, etc.
 
TheDiesel85

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anyone have a chart or a good strech out plan to follow?
 
jakellpet

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I use 'active recovery' exercises postWO such as swimming.

I should really do the normal stretching as well, Im a bit slack with that....
 
CopyCat

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html?_r=4&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


WHEN DUANE KNUDSON, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Chico, looks around campus at athletes warming up before practice, he sees one dangerous mistake after another. “They’re stretching, touching their toes. . . . ” He sighs. “It’s discouraging.”

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Horacio Salinas

The New York Times
Sports Magazine
Go to Complete Coverage »
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Illustration by Emily Cooper
STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH (for the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.
Enlarge This Image

Illustration by Emily Cooper
SCORPION (for the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles) Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, then kick your left foot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.
Enlarge This Image

Illustration by Emily Cooper
HANDWALKS (for the shoulders, core muscles and hamstrings) Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. ‘‘Walk’’ your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times.

If you’re like most of us, you were taught the importance of warm-up exercises back in grade school, and you’ve likely continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg’s muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements.

“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” says Malachy McHugh, the director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.

THE RIGHT WARM-UP should do two things: loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of various joints, and literally warm up the body. When you’re at rest, there’s less blood flow to muscles and tendons, and they stiffen. “You need to make tissues and tendons compliant before beginning exercise,” Knudson says.

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated — that is, warmed up.

To raise the body’s temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That’s why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who’d warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.) Then it’s time for the most important and unorthodox part of a proper warm-up regimen, the Spider-Man and its counterparts.

“TOWARDS THE end of my playing career, in about 2000, I started seeing some of the other guys out on the court doing these strange things before a match and thinking, What in the world is that?” says Mark Merklein, 36, once a highly ranked tennis player and now a national coach for the United States Tennis Association. The players were lunging, kicking and occasionally skittering, spider-like, along the sidelines. They were early adopters of a new approach to stretching.

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. (For other dynamic stretches, see the sidebar below.)

Even golfers, notoriously nonchalant about warming up (a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother), would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their clubhead speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks.

Controversy remains about the extent to which dynamic warm-ups prevent injury. But studies have been increasingly clear that static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help. The largest study has been done on military recruits; results showed that an almost equal number of subjects developed lower-limb injuries (shin splints, stress fractures, etc.), regardless of whether they had performed static stretches before training sessions. A major study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, on the other hand, found that knee injuries were cut nearly in half among female collegiate soccer players who followed a warm-up program that included both dynamic warm-up exercises and static stretching. (For a sample routine, visit www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm.) And in golf, new research by Andrea Fradkin, an assistant professor of exercise science at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suggests that those who warm up are nine times less likely to be injured.

“It was eye-opening,” says Fradkin, formerly a feckless golfer herself. “I used to not really warm up. I do now.”

You’re Getting Warmer: The Best Dynamic Stretches

These exercises- as taught by the United States Tennis Association’s player-development program – are good for many athletes, even golfers. Do them immediately after your aerobic warm-up and as soon as possible before your workout.

STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH

(for the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)

Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.

SCORPION

(for the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles)

Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, then kick your leftfoot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.

HANDWALKS

(for the shoulders, core muscles, and hamstrings)

Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. “Walk” with your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times. G.R.
 
Aggravated

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I should start doing stretches more often. Been slacking lately.
 
fightbackhxc

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I have always heard not to stretch. Instead of stretching do warmup sets. Ex.) if your squatting do a warmupset of about 20 reps.
 
CopyCat

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I have always heard not to stretch. Instead of stretching do warmup sets. Ex.) if your squatting do a warmupset of about 20 reps.
Static stretches are bad.
 
Rodja

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Static stretches are bad.
I think bad is the wrong word to use. They negatively effect strength when done before training, but they are very useful post-training. They help to elongate tghe fascia and send more blood into the area. You are generally at your most flexible after training, so it is important to take advantage of this to not improve the ROM, but increase recovery and reduce chance of injury in the future.
 
Theipodpeople

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Static stretches are bad.

Bad for warm ups yes, bad for warm downs, no. Look into dynamic active stretches for warming up. I would do these every once in a while, but got too lazy. Now I Just do treadmill and warmup sets, then do 20-25 minutes stretch downs. I'm almost at full splits for my martial art hobbies.


I know some good articles if you want to get extremely flexible quick, takes some work but a full split in 3 weeks is possible, I haven't started that regimen though.

If you just want to get somewhat flexible for a better lifestyle, try 45-60 second stretches breathing normally, stretching more while exhaling.

This link will teach you everything you want to know and more about types of stretches specific to what you want...
http://www.trickstutorials.com/index.php?page=content/flx3
 
Theipodpeople

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Static stretches are bad.

Bad for warm ups yes, bad for warm downs, no. Look into dynamic active stretches for warming up. I would do these every once in a while, but got too lazy. Now I Just do treadmill and warmup sets, then do 20-25 minutes stretch downs. I'm almost at full splits for my martial art hobbies.


I know some good articles if you want to get extremely flexible quick, takes some work but a full split in 3 weeks is possible, I haven't started that regimen though.

If you just want to get somewhat flexible for a better lifestyle, try 45-60 second stretches breathing normally, stretching more while exhaling.

This link will teach you everything you want to know and more about types of stretches specific to what you want...
http://www.trickstutorials.com/index.php?page=content/flx3
 
Graglor

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I had back and neck problem for years. A chiropractor told me to start doing yoga. The wife and I do a video yogo for half and hour five nights a week and I feel great. It's harder then working out at the gym, but works lol.
 
TripDog

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I do a bunch of stretches every workout. More leg stuff than upper, but both.
 
fightbackhxc

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yeah i suppose i should have specified that haha i do post work out stretching.
 

Matt6969

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i stretch about 20 mins. a night. it will help you with running, keep you from pulling muscles, and help you get stronger faster.
 
brk_nemesis

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Ive been doin DC training for about 3 weeks now,... and there are about 5 static-holds/forced stretching per workout, and all I can say is wow. Regular stretching done after routine.
 
Rodja

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I get some weird ass looks when I stretch after my leg workouts because I put my foot behind my head to stretch my glutes along with a full horizontal splits and a hurdlers stretch where I put my nose on my knee. I have always been extremely flexible even though I have large thighs for my size (hehe, I made a rhyme). I have had very few lowr body strains because of this and I credit it for one of the reasons why I can hold onto my thigh girth w/o sufficient training.
 

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Here are some DC stretches. I do some of them. Normally I like do longer, more passive stretches.

 
Frank Reynolds

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I been DC' stretching for a while now, and simply love them.

I am going to start a stretching routing on my off days, to focus more on getting limber, and more flexable. I still feel pretty ****ing stiff.

Also just started to incorporate Foam Rolling.
 

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