What should you do before backyard cricket on Boxing Day to prepare you body?
In a newsletter past, Mat Prior (illustrious husband of Kirsty, physio to Adelaide United and all-round nice guy) provided a nice summary of what you should do in regards to stretching.
I thought it was only right and proper that this information was reinforced, knowing how many bodies are going to be tested on Boxing Day in the backyard.
For years, right from when we were kids starting sport, stretching has been something that’s been ingrained into us; our coaches told us to do it, our physios told us to do it, our sporting heroes told us to do it – even Big Merv tried to show us the way!
But is stretching before exercise, as part of your warm-up, actually the best thing to be doing?
Static stretching before exercise has been going out of favour lately after a lot of research showed that stretching just before exercise didn’t reduce the risk of injury…..with some evidence even suggesting that it could be a harmful thing!
The reason for this is that a muscle can’t produce as much force immediately after it has been stretched – and when we’re exercising, we want our muscles producing as much force as they can, not only to help us do the exercise, but to help prevent injury.
Think of it this way: if you can normally bench press 100kg, after you stretch your muscles may able to lift only 90kg – the stretch hasn’t made the muscle weaker, but it acts like a volume knob, ‘turning down’ what that muscle can do for a short period.
Now, don’t get me wrong – regular stretching can still be a helpful thing, so that your muscles and joints can move into the positions you need them to move without too much restriction, but it’s of more benefit to do it AFTER you exercise and in-between times, rather than immediately BEFORE you exercise.
Instead, a short warm-up, such as a walk or light jog, where you get a little light sweat up and warm up the specific muscles that you’ll be using, will be much more effective at preventing injury.
If you run into any problems with injury over the Christmas period, we will be open on Wed 28/12 to Sat 31/12 – call us on 8356 1000.
