Stretching before and after training

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

We will never tire of reminding you to warm up. Stretching exercises can perfectly prepare your body for your main warm-up workout. Or they can significantly reduce your productivity and alienate you from the goal. Read about which stretching exercises to give preference to before and after, read this article.

Once again on the need to warm up before training

Both after sleep and after a busy day, your muscles can be quite tight and your joints not mobile enough. During basic training, this can lead to injuries: muscle sprains and tendon inflammation in runners, shoulder damage in bodybuilders, and back pain in yoga practitioners.

Stretching before your main workout can help you avoid injury. However, making a couple of bends towards the toes is not enough to ensure the required level of metabolism. Ever notice how your performance only improves in the middle of your workout? Consider the time before that you were warming up.

Warm up before, not during the main workout

The optimal warm-up time is 15–20 minutes. For the first 10 minutes, it is worthwhile to warm up the muscles well:

easy jogging;
jumping rope;
squats without weights;
bench press.

After that, you can move on to stretching exercises.

Static and dynamic stretching

During static stretching, the pose is held for more than 30 seconds with a gradual increase in muscle extension to the maximum. Complete relaxation and stretching of the muscle occurs only after 30-60 seconds.

In the case of dynamic stretching, the exercise is performed in constant motion, and the increase in amplitude is achieved through repeated repetition of short (3-5 seconds) movements.

An important point: when performing both static and dynamic stretching, the movements should be smooth, with a gradual increase in amplitude and without pain.

So what stretching exercises should you choose for your workout?

During warm-up - dynamic stretching

First, constant movement during dynamic stretching will keep the body warm.

Second, static stretching before your main workout can hinder your performance. Excessive muscle relaxation can lead to slower speed in runners or poor sense of balance in bodybuilders.

Perform dynamic exercises, staying in the pose for no more than 5 seconds, doing 4-6 repetitions.

Particular attention should be paid to exercises that mimic the movements of the main workout (1-2 exercises, 15-20 repetitions each).

An approximate plan for working out the whole body:

Neck: rotation of the head, turns to the right and left, tilts up and down.
Shoulders: up and down motion, circular motion, hand swing to the side.
Back and Chest: Stretching the back with the arms locked in front of you and pulling the arms back to open the chest.
Hands: circular motion in the shoulder and elbow joints.
Body: tilts left-right, down, turns at the waist and rotation of the pelvis.
Legs: circular movements of the knees, lunges to the side and forward, circular movements of the feet, bends to the feet.

Static stretching - during a hitch

Static stretching will relax tense muscles and help remove waste products from them faster, allowing you to recover faster.

Pay special attention to the muscles that your workout was targeting, the ones that buzz the most.

Each approach should take at least 30 seconds. In doing so, you should feel stretching, but not pain. Breathe regularly and deeply for maximum results.

It is important that the place where you perform static stretching is not cold: only in warmth will the muscles be able to relax enough.

Outcomes

Dynamic stretching before main workout will help warm up muscles and reduce the risk of injury - 5-10 minutes of short, full-body exercises from head to toe.
Post-workout static stretching help relaxation and recovery - pull for 30-60 seconds each especially tense muscle.
The main rule: stretching exercises should be performed without sudden jerks and pain.