Stretching before and after exercise can help reduce pain in your muscles for a variety of reasons. Stretching before activity helps you start stressful movements with muscles that are warm and pliable. Stretching after exercises helps lengthen muscles and remove anabolic wastes. Not all stretching is beneficial, depending on when and how you do the stretches. Understanding how different stretches affect your muscles can help you improve your performance, decrease injury and reduce stiffness and soreness.
Types of Stretches
You can do three basic stretches: ballistic, dynamic and static. Ballistic stretches are those commonly referred to as "bounce stretches," where you repeatedly bounce past the point of your comfortable range of motion. These are not helpful and can cause a tear if you do them too far and too quickly. They also tighten your muscles just before you need to use them. Dynamic stretches are moderate-intensity stretches that mirror a sport movement, such as skipping or swinging your arms. Static stretches are those you hold for 20 or 30 seconds, holding the stretch slightly past your comfortable range of motion.
Pre-Activity Stretching
Dynamic stretches are best before workouts or competitions. These types of stretches help warm and stretch muscle and get more blood flowing to them. Static stretches desensitize your muscles for 15 minutes or longer and decrease your power and vertical leap, making them a bad choice for pre-activity stretching.
Post-Activity Stretching
After you work out, static stretching helps you lengthen the muscles you've just shortened doing exercises, running or other physical movements. Static stretching also helps remove excess blood, lactic acid and other wastes that can pool in your muscles after you use them. This helps reduce stiffness and pain, known as Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness, that occurs up to a day after you exercise.
Injury Prevention
Many recreational athletes believe static stretching before a game, match or event helps improve flexibility and performance and reduces the risk of injury. There are no studies that show that pre-activity stretching decreases performance. This type of stretching may actually increase your risk of injury by temporarily masking muscle pain and discomfort, causing you to use that muscle or those muscles harder than you would if you were aware there was a problem.
References
- Physiology of Stretching; Types of Stretching; Bradford D. Appleton
- Society for Tennis Medicine and Science: Is Static Stretching for Tennis Beneficial?
- Wichita State University: Static vs. Dynamic Stretching on Vertical Jump and Standing Long Jump
- Physiology of Stretching; Flexibility; Bradford D. Appleton
