Should you stretch before running?
I’ve heard that stretching before running lowers the risk of getting hurt and suffering
from soreness afterward.
Yet we rarely see people stretching before they are running for their lives.
You see plenty of lions stretching before chasing down a meal.
Half of that is because they’ve been napping all day.
Haven’t there been studies on this?
They’ve had medical studies on everything.
A review of all the different studies on the topic found that doing warm up exercises was
better than stretching.
Warm up exercises are just stretching with momentum.
Balance exercises were good before you went for a jog.
Especially if it prevented you from falling down and getting hurt.
Even strength training before jogging was better than plain old stretching.
I’d hate to think that body builders who take a jog after an hour of weight lifting
are better prepared than runners who spend ten minutes stretching.
The body builders rarely stretch but don’t have a problem jogging.
Yet the runners who spend 15 minutes stretching still sometimes pull muscles or suffer soreness.
And that’s on top of the joint damage excessive jogging can do.
Maybe you need to switch to long walks.
Takes up too much time.
So get an elliptical machine.
At least now you know you don’t have to waste time stretching before you use it.
I’d hate to think that all the stretching I was doing was a waste, or even bad for me.
Stretching isn’t bad for you.
It does improve your range of motion and flexibility.
So it helps me lean over to pick up the remote without throwing out my back but doesn’t
help me avoid muscle damage when jogging.
Older runners may benefit from stretching by keeping their soft tissue more elastic,
but younger runners are fine.
Except for when they try to text and run.
Some of those kids are candidates for the Darwin Awards.
Some already are.
Maria Pestrikoff fell off a cliff that way.