I was in the gym this morning, moving through my workout and I noticed something that I hadn’t picked up on before - the amount of people static stretching before their working sets. STOP people, seriously!
A common training myth that just can’t seem to die is that you should stretch BEFORE physical activity. The truth could not be any farther from this. You should NEVER stretch a cold muscle - doing so can drastically increase the chances of injury and DECREASE the contractile force of said muscle, thereby decreasing your performance!
The idea behind warming up is to raise your heart rate and core body temperature. Through this, blood and oxygen will be pumped around the body at an increased rate. A better way to warm up can include ‘warm-up sets’ of high reps (with light weight) or doing 10 minutes on a treadmill / elliptical machine. If you can’t bear To part with stretching - try a DYNAMIC stretching routine, to better effect.
Either way, do yourself a favour - STOP static stretching PRE workout to START moving towards a better performing and injury free you.
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