I hear static stretching is bad before a workout, and I am also hearing now that it isn’t very beneficial anytime before or after a workout either. Is this true? If I want to improve my flexibility should I just be sticking with dynamic stretches?
Thanks for your input,
Brendan
Yes, static stretching before a workout is bad. It can increase the threat of injury and also leaves the muscles weaker, so you’ll likely be lifting less weight.
I do use static stretches post-workout; I feel it helps with my flexibility in my weak areas (hips, hamstrings).
I see your question sinking fast to the bottom, but Ive recently taken stretching a bit more seriously (age, and feeling little pains here and there). That and I think stretching gets seriously under rated as a tool to lifting.
I find that dynamic stretching prior to and after lifting to be the best for me. At night I do some static stretches and foam roller work.
To answer your question, I believe dynamic is the way to go prior to lifting, then experiment with other things like foam roller work.
Dyanmic works much better than static, even after the workout. No contest.
I hear its bad also, I don’t know if I completely agree. I definitely don’t think you should really push yourself on a static stretch before a workout though.
Post workout I’ve always hard its good. They say it gets the blood to the muscles, while relaxing them and yourself. I might do it for 2 minutes, but by time I finish my workout I just want to go home.
One thing I do find though is that Static Stretching doesn’t help my flexibility. Dynamic would probably be better as well as using full range exercises. Such as stiff legged deadlifts off a platform or something.
I read in Eric Cressey’s What I learned in 2006 article that static hamstring stretching is not recommended.
I also read in the archives and article called Mister Spine
( http://www.T-Nation.com/findArticle.do?article=270spine2 ) where Stuart Macgill said hamstring stretching compromises knee stability.
Most people seem to recommend static stretches for the hamstrings.
What do you think?
recent studies show that stretching pre exercise does not help with injury prevention.
From a study by the National Strength and Conditioning Assoc.
“…prior stretching could reduce the number of lifts and limit the total benefit that could have been achieved. Finally, if the hypothesized neural inhibition is occurring, then prior stretching would prevent a set pool of motor units from ever being activated, and thus, a certain portion of the muscle would never get trained.”
"Substantial evidence is now available to state that static stretching can impair strength and power performance, although the duration of the impairment, the exact stretching protocols, and the physiological mechanisms are not yet known. Given the lack of evidence in favor of static stretching during warm-up for injury prevention, it seems justifiable to exclude this component from the warm-up for strength and power activities. Progressive submaximal exercise intended to increase muscle temperature and practice trials of the ensuing activity should be retained.
Some coaches have replaced static stretching with dynamic activities. For example, Rutledge and Faccioni (24) outlined warm up activities for field hockey that consisted of running drills that isolated various joints and were performed with gradually increasing intensity. When an athlete performs run-throughs at progressively increasing intensities, the joints are taken to a new ROM; therefore, the muscles are being stretched dynamically. Whether such a dynamic warm-up has the same effect as static stretching for increasing ROM or influencing the injury risk is not clear, but is worthy of examination. Further experimentation is needed before the optimum warm up protocol can be identified."