Stretching Before Exercise

This warm-up routine not only prevents us from performing to the best of our abilities, it also makes us injury-prone

It has been a generally-held view that one should stretch before starting any exercise. The argument goes that this will help loosen our muscles and make them stronger, and will prevent injuries. However, two new studies show that these warm-up exercises not only prevent us from performing to the best of our abilities, they also make us injury prone.

One of the studies, conducted by researchers at Austin State University in Texas, US, found that stretching before lifting weights can make an athlete feel weaker and more unbalanced than if s/he had not stretched. For the study, which was published in Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, researchers studied 17 healthy young men as they performed standard squats with barbells. It was found that the men who had not stretched could hold 8.3 per cent more weight than those who did. Those who had stretched also reported that they felt more ‘wobbly’ after an exercise.

In the second study, conducted by researchers from University of Zagreb in Croatia, they examined the results of 104 previous studies which had examined the impact of stretching on sprinting, jumping, lifting weights and dunking a basketball. They analysed only those studies which used ‘static stretching’—where we extend our limbs and hold such a position for a period of time—as an exclusive warm-up, as opposed to those in which people underwent active warm-up exercises or stretched while also jogging before an exercise session.

The researchers of this study reported that stretching reduces strength in stretched muscles by almost 5.5 per cent. The researchers state that this percentage increases with more time spent stretching. They also found that stretching can reduce explosive muscular performance—for instance, sprinters bursting from a starting block—by 2.8 per cent.

While it is not clear how exactly stretching impacts one’s ability, researchers of both studies suggest that this could be because stretching, while loosening muscles and their accompanying tendons, also make them less capable of storing energy and thus reduce the ability to spring into action when required.

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