I was reading an article in ESPN High School magazine called “The Truth About Stretching” by Cristina Goyanes where she talked about the fact that static (longer one position holds) stretching can be bad for your sports performance, even increasing injury risk. This happens says Goyanes, when you keep a muscle in a relaxed state making it hard for the muscle to fire up and contract when needed. The article goes on to talk about dynamic (active, repetitive movements of the body) stretching being a better way to improve blood flow and increase range of motion before starting an activity.
I have experienced this myself before a taekwondo class when I have spent a lot (too much) of time stretching out to try to loosen up before class starts. I have actually felt like my legs tire out faster and I lose some of my speed toward the end of class. I have had much greater success using a couple of dynamic muscle balancing techniques just five minutes or so before class.
So regarding my last post about holding stretches longer, I want to comment that for an over all improvement in flexibility and range of motion, you do need to work on lengthening and relaxing the tissue, and that is best done with longer, slower, more body-aware types of releases and stretches. If you are stretching ten minutes before a run, aerobics class or sporting event, that is not the time to work on improving your flexibility, it is the time to warm up with active stretches. Active stretching pumps blood into the muscle which helps to warm and loosen it up in preparation for action. A muscle that is too stretched out immediately prior to an event will not be able to contract with as much power and speed. Goyanes notes that some studies have shown that static stretching before an event can make you slower and weaker by as much as 30%.
So for peak sports performance we need it all. We need to slow down and carve out time for slow, long hold stretches that help release the restrictions in our tissues and improve flexibility. We need to work on conditioning and strength for our sport. And we need a good warm up before any type of activity that is full of dynamic stretches.
There are two particularly excellent ways to incorporate dynamic stretching into your warm up routine. Total Motion Release is a series of dynamic and corrective exercises that helps you balance out the right to left asymmetries in your system to prepare your body for exercise and any activity of daily living. And Active Isolated Stretching: The Mattes Method is a series of dynamic stretching techniques developed by Aaron Mattes that use repetitive active movements with a one or two second hold to warm the body up.
I teach both of these stretching methods in my practice so for any further information, don’t hesitate to call or email! Or catch me before class starts and I will teach you one or two of the exercises!
