WHY STRETCH?

Stretching is vital for injury prevention and if carried out correctly can also improve recovery and
enhance athletic performance.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE STRETCH?

When we stretch we increase the length of both our muscles and tendons, giving us a wider range of movement, which means our limbs and joints can move further. We become more flexible, therefore reducing the chance of injury.

It's not only during your workout that flexibility is important. Unless you stretch regularly, your joints grow less flexible
over time. Less flexibility also means less range of movement in your daily life. So if you reach or twist to pick something up, you’re more likely to injure yourself and if you take part in a sport or training programme without including some kind of stretching, you will find your general flexibility to decrease even faster.

While warming-up is important, a good cool-down also plays a vital role in helping to prevent sports injury. How? A good cool-down will prevent blood from pooling in your limbs. It will also prevent waste products, such as lactic acid, building up in your muscles. Not only that, a good cool-down will help your muscles and tendons to relax and loosen, stopping them from becoming stiff and tight.

While preventative measures such as warming-up and cooling-down play a vital role in minimizing the likelihood of sports injury, other techniques such as obeying the rules, using protective equipment and plain common sense are all useful.

Stretching should never be done on cold muscles.

If you try to stretch a rubber band to its limits when it's cold, one of two things will happen. Either it won't stretch very far – or it will simply snap. If, however, you roll it around in your hands and give it a few less intense 'practice stretches', stretching it to its full extent becomes easy, and the likelihood of snapping it is minimal.

Your muscles work very similarly. If you try to do any kind of exercise 'cold', you'll either have a very small range of movement – or you move too far and tear the muscle tissue. Warm up first for 5-10 minutes do a few practice stretches – and your full range of motion is easier to achieve safely. When you stretch during cool down at the end of a workout, there shouldn’t be a problem as your muscles will be warm.

WHEN SHOULD YOU STRETCH?

Many of us were taught to stretch before we do any kind of exercise. In fact, the best time to stretch depends on the kind of exercise we'll be doing. For training that involves slow, controlled movements there's evidence that stretching before a workout is counter-productive. Strength training requires muscles to contract tightly against a heavy weight, and loosening the muscle fibres by stretching them first reduces their ability to do this. This doesn't mean you shouldn't warm your muscles up before strength training – just avoid stretching them first. If you want to include stretching in the same workout as strength training, it's better to wait until after you've finished your weights work.

For anything involving uncontrolled dynamic movements, however (and this would include most sports, dance methods and martial arts), stretching beforehand is important to avoid injury. Just think back to the rubber band metaphor.

For anything that doesn't fit into either of these categories, you can probably include your stretching whenever you want to. For example, if your exercise is walking (and you do a lot of walking, so it's within your usual range of motion), you could stretch before, after, during or any combination of the three.