To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elastic
Good article from the NY Times:
www.nytimes.com/.../13Best.html
Excerpt:
The truth is that after dozens of studies and years of debate, no one really knows whether stretching helps, harms, or does anything in particular for performance or injury rates. Yet most athletes remain convinced that stretching helps, and recently more and more have felt a sort of social pressure to show that they are limber, in part due to the popularity of yoga. Flexibility has become another area where many athletes want to excel.
I think stretching is helpful for injury prevention, but only if you stretch the right things. You want to stretch such that the forces around your joints stay in balance, and that balance might differ person to person based on someone's bone/biomechanical structure. I think people often like to stretch what feels good... unfortunately what feels "good" is often the worst thing to stretch... it's often the muscle that's already nice and limber (thus you feel like you can get a really grrreat stretch there). But in reality, you should be stretching the opposing muscle that's pulling your body (shoulder, knee, back, neck, whatever) out of whack.
I think stretching is helpful for injury prevention, but only if you stretch the right things. You want to stretch such that the forces around your joints stay in balance, and that balance might differ person to person based on someone's bone/biomechanical structure. I think people often like to stretch what feels good... unfortunately what feels "good" is often the worst thing to stretch... it's often the muscle that's already nice and limber (thus you feel like you can get a really grrreat stretch there). But in reality, you should be stretching the opposing muscle that's pulling your body (shoulder, knee, back, neck, whatever) out of whack.
