Stretching

I have read that you should not stretch before lifting because it will make you weaker and clumsy, I have also read that stretching after lifting will do harm to the already tore down muscles and for some scientific reason make your muscles shorter? Can anyone give me a clue about when to stretch and also some good stretching exercises. I currently stretch after lifting and I only know of a few basic stretches

I dont stretch much unless I'm unusually tight. I usually just do some warmup with light weight of the movement I'm about to do. I do reccommend an article in T-mag.com called the Lazy Mans Guide to Stretching. Type in stretching on their search engine and it will come up. It's a good article on what your looking for. Skins got Gardner I see!

SKINSFAN you are right to a certain degree.

I think what you were referring to is something called stretch weakness which basically means that if you hold a stretch for a very long time, your muscles, joints, and ligaments will start to weaken. But it is recommended that you stretch before and after your workouts. Hold each stretch for 15 to 30 seconds each and just stretch to the point where you feel the stretch and never beyond that!

Here is an online book about stretching:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masrjb/Stretch/stretching_1.html


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If you build it they will come

Brief stretching is part of my warm-up for the muscle group that I'm going to work that day.

I've found that a thorough warm-up and stretch of the shoulders is necessary for me to assue that I don't suffer a shoulder injury. But maybe that's cause I'm getting old!


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got muscle?

If I stretch before training I always find that im actually stronger due to the muscles being warmed up. And as prince said there is less chance of injuring yourself.

But be careful not to stretch a COLD muscle!