Stretching

petermijackson

Just seen a guy doing some stretching and he was only hitting the stretch for about a second - I usually a stretch for up to 10 seconds (probably a habit from playing football). I was always told not to bounce in a stretch, this guy was not bouncing but just not holding it for very long.

What do other's do? Is there an optimal way to stretch or is it just what feels right?

Am I doing something wrong??

Morgoth

Just from personal experience...

Bouncing = bad! Not that I've even tried. It just sounds wrong!

Go deep and go long on the stretch. I like to count slow in-out breaths for 20 or 30 before releasing. That's probably 40-50 seconds. This would apply to quads and calfs. A minute or so holding the hamstring. Achilles/lower calf (dropping the heel of a step) about 30 seconds each rep.

etc...

Definitely don't think a quick hold-for-a-second does anything.

But I'm not educated in such things and could be overlooking something.

fiddy3

petermijackson wrote: »

Just seen a guy doing some stretching and he was only hitting the stretch for about a second - I usually a stretch for up to 10 seconds (probably a habit from playing football). I was always told not to bounce in a stretch, this guy was not bouncing but just not holding it for very long.

What do other's do? Is there an optimal way to stretch or is it just what feels right?

Am I doing something wrong??

He was probably doing either active isolated stretching (short holds of just about 2 secs repeated many times) or dynamic stretching (movement involved with stretches on muscles at the end of range of motion). Both of these are becoming much more popular than traditional static stretching before exercise. Don't bother with static stretching as described above before running, it's been shown to be at best useless and at worst harmful to performance. Static stretching (holding it from 10-60secs) still has a place, but IMO, should only be used in the evenings, after training.

Peemaccee

I remember seeing this in the New York Times a while back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html
Its an excellent article.
The funny thing is that even though I am totally sold that
active stretching is how it should be done I still do it the way
I always did.
Hard to change after 30 years of doing it wrong.:)