Is it beneficial to stretch immediately before strength training?
I recently read that after stretching, there is less contact between the muscles actin and myosin heads, which temporarily reduces the muscles strength. I am wondering if this is true throughout the muscle’s entire ROM and how long does it take for the muscle to regain it’s original strength? Would stretching negatively impact a weight lifting regimen? Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I use dynamic stretching (engaging the muscle/joint through it’s full ROM) before exercise or sports. In my opinion, this is helpful to my performance as well as in the area of injury reduction.
LaRue, CSCS
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There is alot of new information coming out about the benefits? of stretching
Actually I just read that static stretching prior to exercise will actually turn on the defense mechanism of the muscle and it will tend to go into protection mode. which will impact the performance of that muscle group
There are plenty of articles pertaining to stretching in the IDEA Library/Article
Personally I don’t “stretch” I “warm up”
I am with Susan on this. A good warm up is all I’ve needed before strength training. I do some light stretching before athletic events that require heavy use of flexibility (like grappling, sparring, rock climbing, and contact sports) but, this is just a personal preference. I always feel a little weaker if I stretch too much before exerting myself.
I never stretched before weight training but I now recommend to MELT. MELT is connective tissue self-treatment, and through a process of assess, MELT and re-assess, people become aware of imbalances and learn to address them before ‘hitting the weights’. The rationale is that weight training on improved alignment is likely to improve the motor patterns thus reducing the risk of ‘improving the compensations’.
Hi Alex. Just a point of clarification. Although dynamic “stretching” is called STRETCHING, in truth, because it involves moving your body parts through a full range of motion, in essence it IS a warm-up (for example, in the purest sense of the term, jumping jacks could be considered a dynamic stretch, but it’s also considered part of a warm-up). So, because the goal of dynamic stretching is to warm-up the connective tissues and MOVE, one could call dynamic stretching ‘warming-up.’
I agree with the other posters that dynamic stretching is primarily used when competing in an athletic event, however, if my “weight training” was going to incorporate more ‘movement-based’ training techniques such as plyometrics, for example, then I would probably use and recommend the use of dynamic stretching.
I hope that this helps.
LaRue
www.lecfitness.com
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