Static Stretching -- Bad for you?

[James]

I read something interesting about stretching, it basically said that normal static stretches can actually hurt your performance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.htm...

It makes me feel better about just starting out slowly instead of doing dedicated stretching most of the time.

Thoughts?

[avatarofmist]

It's not bad if you warm up first and stretch out your muscles. As long as your muscles loosen from heat, it's safe to stretch.

[Silentmouse]

that is not true at all,
stretching develops flexibility and builds up blood flow to the muscles in areas other than when they are in upright standing/walking position.
static stretching can be bad for you if you push your muscles into a deep threshold of pain. that creates larger than microtears in your muscles and can develop into nasty things such as real tears(pulls).

What this article is exaggerating on is static stretching before increasing oxygen and blood flow decreases performance.
I completely agree that a brisk skip or very light cardio activity should come first, however static stretching is something that should accompany training.I usually walk, bike, or run everywhere so I tend to static stretch first depending on the situation. Since I don't compete or usually do anything especially dangerous xP this works fine for me.
Try what works best for your body, however do not denounce static stretching in your training.

[James]

Yes, it turns out that on farther investigation it's a good idea to do that afterwards. It just stuck me how it seems like that's often what can end up happening as a before-* thing to do.

To be clear, I did not mean to say 'don't stretch'. For one, IDK what works for other people, and for the other, it's not my place to say anyway. It's just something interesting to think about.

[JFlash]

Personally I think this is self-contradictory BS and with nothing to back it up.
Thing is, I don't usually care about stretching; sometimes i do it and sometimes not, so something like this that makes stretching more that just sitting there in pain while your muscles are pulled aound doesn't sound all that bad. Maybe if stretching is more interactive like this I'll be more likely to do it...who knows? I'll give it a shot and if it works, great, if not, whatever- no sweat off my back.

[Thane]

I think I read something somewhere once that said that if you don't do some kind of light to medium cardio workout before you stretch, your body will release some sort of "natural painkiller" chemical into your muscles so you won't be able to feel pain when you stretch too far, which is dangerous. It said that if you DO do a cardio workout....it doesn't release the chemical, which is good....

Don't go on me though....I only vaguely remember this...I'm probably wrong lol

[laurinsane]

yea it's always good to get you heart rate up a little before stretching so your muscles are not cold. Only a couple minutes. You can start with static stretches but then you can finish off with ballistic stretches which are things such as kicking your legs, swinging your arms, etc. etc.

[BobT]

For those who are interested:

Warm-up and stretching

[Manny J.]

in my fitness class at school, my coach says that kinetic or ballistic stretching is 100 times better than static stretching because it prepares your muscles for the movement that you'll be doing in whatever sport/activty you'll be doing, and in our case: free running. he also does say that static stretching can hurt you and is best done after the sport is done being performed.

[travis]

I completely agree with this. As a personal trainer and future physical therapist, ballistic stretching before any type of athletic activity will greatly help in performance. Static stretching should be done after work outs. Each stretch for static stretching should be held for 20-30 seconds to greatly increase the desired effect. Static stretching will help increase ROM (range of movement) but ballistic will help with explosiveness.

[Bionicgrape]

Well, I need to finish writing this, but check out what I wrote about stretching so far here. The only time you would need to worry about stretching of any kind affecting your performance would be if you were competing and really needed the extra edge that you'd lose from the static stretching. In general though, some form of dynamic stretching is preferable.