Not stretching/suggesting that it isn’t helpful is wild. Stretching is a pretty widely encompassing, pretty broad term. I’d consider popping my mid/upper back, rotating my joints (ankles, shoulders, hips, etc.) all a part of stretching and limbering up and is a very important part of the warm up process. I have a series of stretches just to limit pain and impact from a severely torn glute I never got surgery on. PT I went to gave me a series of stretches just to strengthen that area and it includes hamstring stretches and other band exercises that I’d sort of call ‘stretching.’
Stretching helps keep you from ending up a stiff fuck as you age. Like someone else mentioned, animals instinctually stretch all the time. I think when done correctly, it helps active muscle groups and alter blood flow. I think that’s a big part of why yoga is so helpful.
Testosterone tapers off the longer you are awake , so training late isn’t as beneficial but nothing wrong with it either.
As said above dynamic stretching or warming up with light exercise and bands before training definitely is a good idea but you need to warm up in general, if you’re deadlifting , deadlift light to warm up , same with any other exercise, you don’t need some over the top warm up routine either, just get the blood pumping into the muscles you are going to work.
This. It seems obvious to me that stretching is important. As an on and off runner, the difference between stretching and not is self evident. First off, when i stretch before the run, everything just FEELS better. But then there’s the back pain. If i don’t stretch my hips, my back can hurt for days after a run. When i do, no back pain to significantly less back pain.
Where did op see/read that there is “no evidence” that stretching is helpful?
Warm up or priming muscles before workout and stretching afterwards helps me immensely with preventing injury. Almost every time I injure myself working out it’s because I haven’t primed my muscles first or I’ve been slacking on post workout stretches
He posted a link to an article and also cited the player warmup for FIFA as specifically mentioning not to stretch (I didn’t verify that though).
There’re a lot of conflicting studies around stretching. If I had to guess the biggest issue is stretching before warming up. Stretching in and of itself isn’t bad but stretching cold leads to higher rates of injury so sometimes people just say stretching is bad as a blanket statement.
Realistically if you warm up a bit and your workouts utilize full ranges of motion you don’t need to stretch. But stretching shouldn’t be demonized because people suck at it either.
I do stretch, but as another poster said, I do dynamic stretching before, and static after. When you static stretch before you are pulling and lengthening tight muscles way too long/hard, when you’re tight, your movements need to be light and short.
Static stretching afterwards makes more sense because you have already warmed up your tissues, thus lengthening even more, and recovering.
