BehindTheMedspeak: 'Stretching Before Exercise May Be Waste of Time'

Headline of Robert J. Davis' piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.

He's right, and I couldn't have said it any better.

I abandoned pre-race (5K/10K) stretching many years ago, when the first of the now-abundant reports started coming of the uselessness and, in some cases, detrimental effects of pre-exercise stretching.

Now I simply jog around for 20 minutes, superslow, before a race.

Stretching afterward, when your muscles are nice and warm and loose, is another story: that's the time to take advantage of the opportunity to increase your range of motion.

Here's the article.
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Stretching Before Exercise May Be Waste of Time

If you follow the advice of most doctors, coaches and personal trainers, you're probably careful to stretch before exercise in order to prevent injuries and reduce soreness.

But you may be wasting your time.

Studies have repeatedly failed to support the claim and even suggest that stretching beforehand may impair athletic performance.

However, there's evidence that regular stretching, outside of exercise, can be beneficial, as can warming up in other ways.

In a recently published review of research on stretching and sports injuries, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that stretching increases flexibility but that, contrary to popular belief, there is little evidence this decreases the risk of injury.

Likewise, other review articles have found that stretching before exercise doesn't appear to prevent injuries.

One, published in the British Medical Journal in 2002, also showed stretching before or after exercise to have only a negligible effect on muscle soreness following exercise.

The latest review of studies, published in the current issue of the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, focused on athletic performance.

It showed that when people stretched right before tests of strength, muscle contraction and jumping ability, they did worse than when there was no stretching, regardless of age, gender, fitness level or type of stretching.

At the same time, the study found that regular stretching, done apart from exercise, was associated with better athletic performance, including greater running speed.

This mirrors other research suggesting that frequent stretching also reduces the risk of injury.

For example, a study of military recruits found that those assigned to stretch their hamstring muscles three times a day, in addition to their regular stretching regimen before morning physical activity, had fewer injuries than those who stretched only before exercise.

Researchers don't fully understand the reasons for these seemingly contradictory findings, but many theorize that frequent stretching, over time, helps by enlarging and strengthening muscles.

They believe stretching only before exercise isn't sufficient to do this and can cause slight muscle damage that impairs performance.

Many experts say that time spent stretching before exercise would be better devoted to warming up in other ways.

That means doing the activity at a lower intensity - jogging very slowly, for example - to increase blood flow to muscles and prepare them for more vigorous exercise.

Studies do suggest that this can help prevent injuries.

As for stretching, try to do it daily, either after exercise or at a time when you're not exercising.

Hold stretches for 10 to 30 seconds, don't bounce and stop if you feel pain.