Stretching Workout Tips - Dynamic and Static Stretching Exercise

Stretching is an important part of your exercise routine because of the tremendous benefits it has on your overall physique and health. Unfortunately, most weight lifters don't take stretching seriously, and not increase their risk of injury but also decrease their gains. This is because stretching improves the overall efficiency and strength of your musculoskeletal system.

From my personal experience, most beginning weight lifters tend to associate stretching with joint mobility rather than muscle elasticity, which is a poor way to look at stretching. When you stretch, you increase the elasticity of the muscle, which allows it to be pushed further. For many people, stretching has obvious benefits. While the decrease in the risk of injury isn't as large as once thought, it is still useful in that regard. For weight lifters, though, stretching has two primary benefits: the first is that it stretches the fascia, which allows your muscles to grow more quickly, and the second is that it increases the range of motion in which you can perform an exercise. A good range of motion during exercise increases the intensity of the workout, thereby increasing strength and muscle gain.

What to Avoid Doing

While stretching is a generally safe activity, there are a few things you shouldn't do. The main thing that a lot of people do wrong is to push themselves to the point of pain. Stretching should not cause pain, as you're damaging your muscles and actually reducing how much of the muscle gets stretched. This is due a response in the muscle that happens when it is overstretched; it'll actually begin to contract, so to resist the stretching force. This usually succeeds pain, but it can happen before or during it, so it's important to avoid the pain signal all-together. Your flexibility will increase in time, so there's no reason to push yourself past the pain threshold. In light of this information, the best place to hold your stretch is right at the pain boundary. It is generally thought of as safe to feel a slight pain or tingling when stretching, but pushing for anything more is ill-advised.

Another thing you'll want to avoid when stretching is forcing yourself into position ballistically. This is called ballistic stretching, where you use momentum to push yourself into a more stretched position. This is not at all beneficial and may actually increase your risk of injury. You should work your way slowly into the stretched position, and hold it right at the pain threshold.

Dynamic and Static Stretching

As a beginner, you'll need to know about the two types of stretching that you'll be doing most: static and dynamic. Dynamic or active stretching requires working the muscles into a stretched position slowly and with active movements. An example of active stretching would be arm circles, where you slowly progress into wider arcs to stretch the muscle. Static stretching is the more traditional type, where you continue to stretch the muscle until you reach the point where it is fully stretched.

You should always do dynamic stretching before a workout because it is more effective in reducing the risk of injury. The other major benefit of dynamic stretching is that it doesn't cause muscle weakness after being performed, while static stretching does. Studies have shown that static stretching can significantly decrease muscular strength for up to an hour after it is done. While static stretching is great for cool-down, as it can decrease muscle soreness, it is not useful as a warm-up because it will decrease your overall strength.

Additional Stretching Tips

When you're performing your warm-up, you should start out doing ten reps per dynamic stretch. You can break these up into sets of five, but it doesn't really matter if you do or don't. Examples of dynamic stretches include arm circles, arm swings / crosses, torso twists, side bends, leg swings, side leg swings, and lunge walks. You should warm up using these exercises before every workout, even if you don't plan on hitting that specific body part.

For your cool-down, you should use static stretches. Most athletes perform the stretch twice and hold it for about twenty seconds. As a beginner, you can probably just do it once and hold for ten to fifteen seconds, but the choice is up to you. You won't receive much additional benefit from holding it longer than that. There are a myriad of static stretches available, but few are actually named, and it's difficult to describe how they are done, so I suggest looking up how to stretch the various muscles and following the advice given. The main muscle groups that you'll want to target are: the shoulders, triceps, forearms, spinal erectors / lower back, quads, hamstrings, calves, and tibialis. You can also target your traps, lats, and neck, but these muscles are somewhat difficult to stretch.

Source:

L. Parsons, N. Maxwell, C.Elniff, M. Jacka, N. Heersche, "Static vs Dynamic Stretching on Vertical Jump and Standing Long Jump." Witchita State University.