Stretching Before Weights Causes Injury, and Here's Why
"I'm quitting Heroes Fitness to go to another gym, because they do stretching before workouts." It's a sentence I have heard, and realized something I have failed at as a coach. But the failure wasn't in not stretching, rather, not educating our clients on why we don't do traditional static stretches before lifting weights. In this post, I will clear the air on why we warm up the way we do at Heroes Fitness.
What do you think of when I ask you what a warm up is? I imagine most people think of reaching for their toes with straight legs, hip flexor stretches, side reaches.. but if you've ever done a workout at Heroes Fitness, you will notice that we never do that. Those are what is called "static stretches," and they certainly have their place, but it is absolutely not before a workout.
A meta analysis of 104 studies on static stretching from 1966 to 2010 can help you understand our reasoning. They concluded that static stretching before strength training basically made you weaker (1), noting averages of strength dropping by about 5.4%, power by 2%, and explosiveness by 2%. So, static stretching has been shown to reduce performance during a lifting session.
However, there's more to it than that. The point made is about why you shouldn't stretch before a lift, but the question I would return to you is why would you stretch before a lift?
Most would say to prevent injuries, right? That can be true in some scenarios. However, stretching isn’t a magic shield against injuries. It depends on the sport. Explosive sports like soccer or basketball may get some benefit from extra flexibility because the muscles act like springs. But for most people doing everyday workouts, running, lifting, or cycling, stretching before exercise doesn’t actually reduce injury risk. (2)
Now that we've cleared the air about static stretching, and why we don't implement that into our sessions, let's talk about how we do properly warm up.
When someone asks me why we don't stretch to warm up, my response is simply, "We do, just not how you imagine stretching."
At Heroes Fitness, we do what's called "dynamic stretching" with resistance. When we think about warming up, we are really thinking about preparing the joints for what they are about to do.
If you are to do a push up, what joints will be active? The main moving joints would be your elbow and shoulder, while your hips would be working to resist movement. If you do a squat, your knees and hips will be active. Since we do a lot of these types of movements, we start our sessions with some cardio methods that move blood throughout these areas.
The three warm up machines we use are the Ski machine, Row machine, and Air bike. In all of these, you move joints your arms and legs, which can help you prep those areas. After a few minutes there, we move on to the first exercise. For this example, let's say your first exercise in bench press.
Instead of bringing your arm across your body to statically stretch your shoulder, we will simply do the movement with very low resistance, and ramp your way up to your working weight. So, if you were to bench press 45 pounds, it would be wise to start with 25 pounds, and slowly work up to 45 pounds, and that's exactly how we do it at Heroes Fitness.
See you in the gym.
Connor Blackmon
Founder of Heroes Fitness
1528 Bloomingdale Ave., Valrico FL
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