begin running

Although we often hear that it’s bad to stretch before running or exercising, we don’t hear that dynamic stretching as part of a warm up is a good idea.

There’s been some coverage of a recent study from the University of Nevada showing how static stretching before exercise may be bad for performance. Although this study was aimed at sprinters, the same applies to those of us going for a gentle forty minute plod around the park. While it maybe bad to do static stretches before exercise, it’s still thought to be a good idea to do them after. As they point out in this study “Developing flexibility is important for reducing sports injury, but the time to stretch is after, not before, performance.”

They recommend whole-body warm-up activity followed by dynamic stretching before exercise. An article in the NY Times has some good basic dynamic stretches and a video demo too. Although this is aimed a tennis players the “Straight Leg March” is a good one for runners and targets the glutes and hamstrings. The usual caveat of taking it easy when doing these stretches for the first time definitely applies here!