Interesting Thoughts On Stretching!

Last week I was talking to a wrestler and we briefly discussed his injuries from his competitive career and his more recent damage from his regular training.

I asked him if he stretched, to which he said ‘No. But funny you say that. My hamstrings and back get tight and I’ve got to push in here (pushing his thumbs into his hip flexors) to make it feel better’.

Interesting…

Helping an athlete who plays Australian Football (AFL) with a shoulder injury, I asked how much stretching do they do at training. He said ‘about 30secs for each lower body muscle group as a warm up’.

His value of having appropriate tissue length and tension has gone up a notch or two with the work we’ve being doing on his shoulder. So I showed him a quick 20min pre-training stretch to do prior to training and playing. After just one session, he really noticed a difference in his legs and ran more freely.

Interesting…

I caught up with a former client who played in a team I used to train. He was telling me he still does all the stretching and strength training programs we created over a six year period. He said, now he trains in a commercial gym, after years in the private team gym where it was normal for everyone to stretch before training, he notices people around him start stretching too during his 15-20min dedicated pre-training stretch.

Once he starts his strength training, people around him don’t seem to be doing their stretching anymore. I too experience this on the rare occasions I find myself in commercial or public settings.

Interesting…

Last week another athlete who I used to train in the same team, told me they’ve had 7 hamstring tears in the first four weeks of the competitive season, which extends over more than 20 weeks. He said ‘We do no stretching anymore!’

Interesting…

A lot of things make a lot of sense when you do them for many hours, everyday, over many years based on your own personal experiences and on a large sample size of athletes.

As Edison said ‘When you become quite, it just dawns on you’. Did I mention we typically stretch in total silence?

Interesting!