Most would agree that a warm-up of some kind is a good idea. Where people get bent out of shape is the how to, when to, and what type of stretching to do before or after an event. Some swear by “Dynamic” only, while others still tell us to do static before we participate in activity.
In his book “Stretching Scientifically”, Kurz tells us that “static stretches improve static flexibility and dynamic stretches improve dynamic flexibility”. He also tells us that there IS considerable transfer from static to dynamic flexibility. I’m not sure how much transferability there is — I think most would agree that it does have its place…so do lima beans, but not at every meal.
Dr. Stuart McGill has stated “static stretching deadens the muscle from a neural perspective — diminishing the stretch reflex and reducing peak strength and power” and I agree. We’ll have our clients perform static stretches at certain times for a specific purpose, but NOT soley as the thing to do prior to competition or in preparation to activity.
One of our lacrosse players has been complaining about hip-flexor pain for a month…she’s had quad pain as well. She doesn’t live in the area, and has not been seen by a doc or physical therapist, nor has she looked for treatment…she’s really just making a bad thing worse and on top of that she’s playing soccer. She did ask me what stretches or exercises would help. I told her first, we need to find out what is driving the tightness — usually we see that muscle tightness is a by-product of a poor movement pattern (s) where a muscle or group of muscles have to compensate or work harder to do the same task (running, jumping, planting or cutting, etc…) — this is why we check the gauges (often) to make sure there are no underlying imbalances. If she continues on the same path, she’ll be stacking fitness on top of dysfunction as she continues to “gut out” the pain during training sessions.
Is it that her hip-flexor is tight, or her glute/hamstring group is weak and or not firing (functioning properly)? I don’t know right now, but we’ll find out and get her back to where she needs to be.
So, what do you do, Dynamic / Static…or nothing, just go out and play? Here’s what we do with most of our athletes and general fitness clients: We’ll start with a movement prep of sorts, which is focusing on mobility, waking the muscles up (Yes! some do go to sleep or kinda shut down) and then progress into dynamic movements and by the time we’re done, most have a sweat going and we’ve got the nervous system firing and ready to go. The whole thing takes about 9-12 minutes and will be added to the video library soon.
Lastly, we will follow a game or training session with static stretching which has been shown to help facilitate recovery.
Cheers -
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
