Archive for February 13th, 2013

There’s nothing wrong with stretching your muscle groups: it prevents injury and may even speed up muscle growth. But you’re better off avoiding static stretches before starting a training session. Even if you’ve been training for years, you’ll reduce your strength, write researchers at the Universidade Nove de Julho in Brazil in an article soon to be published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

You can stretch muscles ‘dynamically’ and ‘statically’. Dynamic stretching involves ‘pumping’: you adopt a stretch pose, then keep on stretching to the point where you feel the stretch in your muscle, and then release it so that the muscle returns quickly to its original length. Then you repeat the procedure. Dynamic stretching boosts performance when done before an explosive training session or during rests between sets.
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