Why Stretching Before Working Out Harms Your Performance

The main reason people do stretching before working out is to prevent injuries – but it doesn’t, it actually increases injury risk and impairs workout/activity quality. The idea behind stretching used to be that it increases flexibility and gets the blood flowing making the muscles more supple and ready for action, thus minimizing injury risk and increasing performance. Most studies actually show this to be a way outdated concept, and it actually works in the complete opposite way. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention couldn’t find a single study out of 100 which showed stretching before a workout prevented injury.

Flexibility is definitely beneficial in any sport, but flexibility should be something attained throughout your off-time, not merely the time you’re about to engage in a workout or sport.

Gaining flexibility takes time; it’s not something you can achieve just by doing a few static stretches a few minutes before a workout or sport anyway – so why even bother? Even if stretching pre-workout did work as once thought, you wouldn’t get any real benefit still because it’s too little too late. You should be flexible enough already!

There are two trains of thought about why static stretching doesn’t work:

Some believe it immediately causes a stiffening reflex (which everyone experiences in the form of muscles tensing up involuntarily when exposed to a stretch which threatens to expand its normal flexibility capacity) which can make a person more susceptible to muscle pulls and tears. Others believe it dampens the explosive muscular reaction needed for most sports – making a person slower, sluggish and possibly even less coordinated.

What should be done to warm up, if not static stretching?

Since warming up is all about preparing your body for the performance it’s about to undergo, it makes sense to simply ease the body into that mode of operation by using movements which mimic those you’re about to perform. As almost no sport is a static sport, but dynamic, then this must be done using dynamic movements.

• If your sport involves sprinting, don’t just sprint – run slow with lower knees and smaller strides and gradually work up to a faster pace, naturally bringing the knees higher and taking longer strides.
• If your sport involves jumping, don’t just jump as high as possible – start by doing small leaps and gradually working up towards the jumping height required.
• If your sport is at some point likely to involve a reaching or lunging movement (to reach a ball out of normal range) then gradually ease yourself into some dynamic directional reaching or lunging.
• If your sport is going to involve some twisting or sudden changing of direction; ease into it.
• If your sport involves kicking or throwing or diving – do it, gradually!
• If your sport involves lifting certain weights or lifting at certain speeds, start low (or slow) and go heavier (or faster) using that same movement.

A good warm up tells the body two things: This is the movement and this is the intensity.

Your body should be much more prepared to accommodate the movements and intensity without injury than if you were to suddenly introduce them out of the blue.

In closing, I know some will invoke the animal argument and say that animals (dogs, lions, etc.) seem to do some form of static stretching, particularly when they wake up, but I would say this: Animals stretch regularly – particularly when they wake up, therefore their flexibility is already good and they’re not pushing it in the same way as a human would pre-workout/sporting activity. Also, animal stretching tends to be less static than humans, more dynamic, and I’m not sure animals actively stretch before a chase in the same way as humans do before a sporting event or workout, and even if they did – who’s to say they themselves are up to date on the latest stretching science and wouldn’t also change their ways if someone had a word in their ear?