Stretch it

….. by stretching yourself beyond your perceived level of confidence, you accelerate your development of competence.

— Michael J. Gelb.

Doesn’t matter!! Whether you are a regular workout junkie or once in a blue moon trooper, stretching is good for everyone before any kind of workout. I had seen people rushing into gym and instantly grabbing their workout machinery without any stretching of muscles and this is the most common cause of gym injuries. Although there is an ongoing debate over whether stretching prevents any injury or not. The point of stretching before workout is solely to increase mobility in joints, and making it more flexible. Personally, I have observed several times skipping stretching before exercise resulted in sudden muscle spasm, pull likewise. You can find a number of articles supporting the need of stretching and on the contrary there are articles which doesn’t find any need of stretching. But nevertheless what I concluded based on my experience is that stretching certainly increases mobility of the muscles, before workouts like cycling, running etc.. You should be clear about the stretches are to be done while cooling down and warming up. Stretching is broadly seen as static and dynamic.

Static stretching is the one where we stretch to the line of light tension for few seconds. It is basically for improving the range of mobility of blood flow to muscles. This includes touching the toes while sitting, lifting your toes straight backwards while standing and many more. This type of stretching goes well while cooling down instead of warming up.

On the other side, dynamic stretching is where you give your muscles long uniform movements like toe swing, leg swings, full arm circular and sideway motions etc. One should go for at least 10 sets of stretch, whatsoever you are doing. As per my experience, if you are heading for cardio workouts dynamic stretches are more beneficial as compared to the static ones, which works well while cooling down.