1- Can you put your palms on the floor with your knees locked?

2- Can you do the splits?

3- Can you grab your hands behind your back?

4- Can you get your arms from in front of you to behind you and back while keeping your elbows locked and holding one end of a towel in each hand?

5- Can you get a foot behind your head?

6- Do you stretch regularly?

And now, the essay -
Why do you or don't you stretch? Or - What do you think is important about stretching?

Yay me, I'm celebrating having got my palms on the floor with my knees locked and wanted to see if stretching was common (cuz it wasn't in my hometown). Oh, And my answers:

1- Yes
2- Not yet
3- Yes
4- Yes
5- Not yet
6- Yes

A) Stretching is not good, and possibly bad. Only stretch as much as is necessary for your sports. Any more only weakens you and exposes you to injury.

Sounds wrong? Yes, it's the opposite of what was taught for decades. But it's what the evidence seems to indicate.

B) I'm not limber and I'm quite happy about it. Functional strength comes from functional exercise. See if you can stretch your way to doing this:

PU7_S_WC18M

Note that because I am on the bosu, the range of motion is farther than it would be off the floor. So I have full range of motion in the SLDL. By the way that set was cold - no warm up, no stretch, no nothing.

1) Yes
2) No
3) Yes
4) Yes
5) No
6) No

The only "regular" stretching I'd get, if you could call it that would probably be first thing in the morning right before I get out of bed. That would be followed by a nice satisfying yawn.

1 Yes
2 No
3 Yes (fingers locked on one side, hands other)
4 I use a dowel, and have worked in to hands 3' wide (maybe slightly less
5 Wouldn't want to :D
6 No

I'm like Zen, I don't want to be loose, I want to be functional. Tight hamstrings for instance aren't as much of a bad thing as weak hamstrings.

Yay me, I'm celebrating having got my palms on the floor with my knees locked

Yeah by the way stop doing that. It's the wrong way to stretch hamstrings. The correct way, if you feel the need to stretch, is like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/dont_miss/fitness/stretches/images/hamstring_stretch.gif

A) Stretching is not good, and possibly bad. Only stretch as much as is necessary for your sports. Any more only weakens you and exposes you to injury.


This is a rather blanket statement- I'd have to disagree with most of it. Sure, stretch all you need for your sport, but it hardly exposes you to injury or makes you weaker, if it's done correctly.

I don't see too many weak gymnasts who are hurting themselves regularly because they are stretching. Or weak olympic lifters because they are limber. Or weak ballet dancers. Or weak high jumpers.

EDIT: I think you're referring to static stretching prior to exercise. I can agree that it can hamper strength. However, increased mobility through stretching can aid in injury prevention- for example, regular hamstring stretching for sprinters can decrease hamstring injuries. The NSCA recommends eccentric stretching, and also static stretching for increased mobility after exercise.

Yeah by the way stop doing that. It's the wrong way to stretch hamstrings. The correct way, if you feel the need to stretch, is like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/dont_miss/fitness/stretches/images/hamstring_stretch.gif

Why?

Why?

A recent thread where I put a bunch of the anti-stretch evidence is here (http://forums.johnstonefitness.com/showthread.php?t=36557&highlight=stretch+hamstrings). It's worth reading because many of the bad things about stretching are explained there.

From that thread, this particular post has the answer to your question:

Not just that but there's a lot of evidence that people who stretch hamstrings before exercise put their ACL at risk. It's thought that tighter hamstrings prevent the knee from hyperextending as easily. There is also evidence that runners who stretch before running have more injuries than runner who don't.

Then there is the problem of stretching hamstrings with the wrong pelvic orientation - if you do the old "touch your toes" stretch then the pelvis and back tilt with respect to each other and that is bad. If you must stretch your hamstrings you are supposed to put the leg you want to stretch in front of you but keep the other leg under you so your back and pelvis remain aligned.

And for endurance running, tighter hamstrings also seem to be more efficient, and stretching can compromise your VO2max. You name it? Seems like stretching can screw it up... and yet for decades everyone thought stretching was good for lots of things.

The current thinking really is more along the lines of stretch only as much as is necessary to provide a normal range of motion for the muscle - anything more compromises the joints that involve that muscle.

1 - No
2 - No
3 - Yes (fingers grasping)
4 - Yes
5 - No
6 - No

I stopped stretching a while ago when I fell out of habit. Before that my answers would have been:

1 - Yes
2 - Yes on right front, almost on left front, no on side
3 - Yes
4 - Yes
5 - Almost
6 - Yes

I haven't seen any better or worse performance compared to when I was more flexible. I will probably start stretching regularly again when the school year starts.

Also as far as zen's post, I'm also much more concerned about pulling a hamstring when I'm running then hyperextending the knee, but then again I don't have any joint laxity of the knee or natural hyperextension that makes that a risk factor. I do believe diligent stretching that results in an overall and continuous increase in flexibility helps prevent injury, while, at the same time, I believe you can be overflexible for a given activity, which, conversely, will increase your likelihood of injury. I believe in dynamic stretching before activity (if needed) and static afterwards.

I do believe diligent stretching that results in an overall and continuous increase in flexibility helps prevent injury.

Go ahead and believe it. We all did for years and years.

But then they actually started to have controlled studies of this, and it turns out there is essentially no evidence that stretching prevents injury. The injury rates were higher with the people that stretched.

Overuse is the cause of a lot of the injuries. When you increase joint mobility then you are going to increase the chances of secondary motions arising and causing wear. If you go by your personal experience you are probably too young to really be exposed to a lot of overuse injuries.

I will say this - after many years of assiduously stretching (fencing is a lot like dancing in that respect) I would say that I have as good or better range of motion now as a result of dropping stretching altogether in favor of resistance exercise. I don't know why we didn't figure that out sooner.

This is a rather blanket statement- I'd have to disagree with most of it. Sure, stretch all you need for your sport, but it hardly exposes you to injury or makes you weaker, if it's done correctly.

OK Don't take it from me. Go look it up all you want. But recent reviews of the literature end up here:

The idea of stretching for many means injuries become less common and athletic performance is enhanced. Multifactorial claims in literature essentially discredit generally accepted ideas of stretching. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretching)


Just keep in mind that if you think stretching promotes mobility - then you also think that it increases the risk of overuse injury. There is no wear without mobility.