Stretching..

hey guys. i’ve got a good routein and everything going, but i have one problem with it. i have to time my gym time pretty precisely. and i don’t know how much time i should devote to stretching. and if the ammount differs before you work out to after you work out. any suggestive ideas?

do it before you go to bed, never stretch before you lift!!!

Agreed, before bed.

And your avatar is about to give me a seizure.

I guess I should stretch before I go to bed. I usually do it before I workout.

I always thought that was the right time, but could you tell me why before I go to bed and not before I work out.

I’m kind a curious.

[quote]Azuremonkey wrote:
I guess I should stretch before I go to bed. I usually do it before I workout.

I always thought that was the right time, but could you tell me why before I go to bed and not before I work out.

I’m kind a curious.[/quote]

Here’s a quote from Stretching Roundtable.

Catanzaro: Bigger muscles? Perhaps. But stronger? I say no way! In my stretching article for T-mag, I mentioned two methods of aggressive stretching advocated by John Parrillo and Torbjorn Akerfeldt where the object is to expand the fascial compartment thus allowing greater room for growth. The classic bird study you’ve probably heard about also proves that stretching may have some merit for muscle growth.

Now, as far as strength is concerned, that?s a whole 'nother story! Sure, dynamic stretching may increase strength temporarily, but static stretching will definitely weaken muscle. The proposed theories of force decrement with stretching (which breaks down to roughly 60% neural and 40% muscular/contractile) include decreased motor neuron excitability, increased tendon slack, decreased stiffness, and altered actin-myosin position.

As the length of the muscle increases, stiffness decreases. As stiffness decreases, force decreases, which means?drum roll please?strength decreases!

what is static and what is dynamic stretching.

Are these strength decreases a temporary issue and that’s why we don’t do it before we workout? So as to give a maximum effort on our exercizes.

Or is it a long term strengh decrease because we’re more flexible, if so should we not stretch too much?

Thx for that post though.

Yeah, and what’s static and dynamic stretching?

May be working out at home is the difference. I wake up, coffee, newspaper, eat, warm up and workout then stretch. Days I don?t work out I warm up and stretch. Try stretching at home.

[quote]Azuremonkey wrote:
Are these strength decreases a temporary issue and that’s why we don’t do it before we workout? So as to give a maximum effort on our exercizes.

Or is it a long term strengh decrease because we’re more flexible, if so should we not stretch too much?

Thx for that post though.[/quote]

The strength decreases are temporary. Try and avoid static stretching within a couple of hours of weight training. Don’t worry about getting too flexible, it’s not going to happen.

[quote]Azuremonkey wrote:
Yeah, and what’s static and dynamic stretching?[/quote]

Static stretching is when you hold a stretch for a given amount of time, like touching your toes for 20 seconds. You don’t move, you just hold the stretch.

Dynamic stretching is when you do an active movement, say running forward while kicking yourself in the rear with your feet, or body weight squats. You’ll work up a sweat and be getting yourself ready for the lifting movements you’ll be doing. I do about a 10 minute dynamic stretching warmup before I lift.

Look up authors like Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson, they just released a DVD all about dynamic stretching and have a bunch of articles about it.

thanks for the help you guys. i really do appreciate it.