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Do You Stretch Before Working Out?
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Anonymous user Wed Aug 15, 2007 15:01:35 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments What’s the first thing you do in the morning immediately after waking up?  You stretch.  Think about how good it feels, reaching over your head, extending your legs and yawning.  After a peaceful night’s sleep, or even a fitful night, stretching transitions the body into consciousness, awakening the muscles and sending blood flowing throughout the body.  While we involuntarily stretch throughout the day, we often leave it out of our workouts.

When discussing fitness, we include cardio, strength, and flexibility.  It seems that women tend to enjoy cardiovascular exercises such as aerobics while men tend to enjoy strength training, but both genders tend to ignore flexibility.  When it comes to working out, stretching ranks right up there with getting your car’s oil changed or doing your laundry.  I think stretching is ignored because it doesn’t burn a ton of calories, make you lose weight, or develop rippling muscles.  We live in an “I want it now” society. If we don’t get immediate and visible results, then we get disappointed and give up.  It’s true, stretching does not create immediate or visible results, but stretching does a body good.  It is tremendously important for developing and maintaining good posture, avoiding injury and alleviating pain in the joints and back.

Flexibility is defined as the ability to move a joint through its full range of motion without pain or discomfort.  As we age we seem to tighten up.  As flexibility diminishes, movements become shorter and slower.  Posture becomes stooped and muscular imbalances occur.  The body functions like a chain; one link being out of kilter can cause a negative “chain reaction.”  Loss of flexibility eventually will cause a disruption in the chain.  For instance, when the back of the legs (the hamstrings) are tight they pull on the back and may cause lower back pain.  If the muscles in the front of the neck are tight the head begins to lean forward, pulling on the upper back.  Tight chest muscles and weak upper back muscles cause a slumped appearance or “hunch back.”  Often when one groups of muscles become tight, the opposing muscles become weak.  Therefore a routine to strengthen the weak muscles and stretch the tight muscles can save the body pain and suffering.

Now the importance of stretching is clear, let’s go over a few stretching basics.  The most important thing to remember is, “stretching is not warming up and warming up is not stretching!”  You may have heard of studies reporting that there is no link between stretching and injury rates.  Do not be misled –this study showed warming up with stretching did not reduce injury rates.  I agree!  I do not recommend stretching as a warm-up.  Research does show that runners who stretch before a workout have higher injury rates than those who don’t stretch.  But it also shows that those who stretch after their workouts have lower rates of injury.

Please remember these four important words – always stretch warm muscles.  Think of bread dough or pizza crust.  How successful do you think you would be at stretching or rolling frozen or cold dough?  Dough that has just come out of the freezer must be thawed or warmed up in order to be pliable and stretchable.  Have you ever seen anyone making a pretzel?  They twirl, twist, and turn the dough before shaping it.  Can you imagine doing that with cold dough?  The same is true for muscles.  A warm-up prepares the muscles for work; it delivers oxygen to them in the form of blood.   When we sit and perform normal daily activities, our heart is pumping out blood, which is primarily being directed to our midsection, or gut, for digestion and regulating bodily functions.  As we begin to exercise the vessels going to the gut begin to restrict blood flow and redirect it to the rest of the body, feeding the muscles with energy.  The muscles now become warm and ready for action.  The best type of warm-up for any workout is the “same but slower” principle.  Perform the type of exercise that you are going to do, but slowly and gently.  For instance, the perfect warm-up for a run is a walk that becomes faster and faster, eventually becoming a run.

A cooling down period, which will gradually lower the heart rate, should follow an intense workout.  The best time to stretch is after the heart rate drops below 100 beats per minute.  Lowering the head below the heart while the rate is still above 100 bpm may cause dizziness, nausea, or even fainting.  Stretching after a workout should, at a minimum, involve the muscles used in the workout.  When strength training, after a brief ten-minute warm-up, each muscle group may be stretched after it has been worked.  There is no need to wait until the end of the workout when performing strength training, although following the entire workout with a five-minute stretch would not only feel good, but be an added bonus for the muscles.

When it comes to stretching, the phrase “no pain, no gain” should be erased from memory.  Stretching should not cause pain.  It’s not how far you go, but how good it feels.  Stretching should feel good.  In order to avoid painful stretching, ease into each stretch slowly, take deep breaths, hold for 10 to 30 seconds, then slowly ease out of the stretch.  Never jerk or bounce through a stretch – this in an invitation for injury.  Think of a rubber band.  Stretching a cold rubber band will cause it to break immediately.  And if you take a rubber band and violently stretch it, jerking and bouncing, it will break.  But gently stretching a warm rubber band slowly and not beyond its limits can make it more flexible and useful.

Extending out your workout by 5 to 10 minutes for stretching exercises is like a gift you can give yourself.  It is free and feels good.  If you want to move more gracefully, have enviable posture, avoid injury and pain as you age, as well as improve circulation, stretch and stretch often.  If it feels good do it, then do it again.  Stretch out your muscles, and stretch out your quality of life!

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