It looks very plausible that stretching before you exercise doesn’t do much for you. Multiple older surveys suggested this.
Annoyingly, the studies linked in the previous paragraph are 2 decades old, and somehow I can’t find a large, well controlled, trial.
absolutely this!
I also think static stretching has its place in injury prevention for day-to-day sprains and injuries. Longer, more pliable muscles = not tearing your hamstring if you accidentally fall into a split. They can be great teaching tools too, and can incorporate some core training.
But otherwise foam rolling, banded distractions, dynamic warmups get the job done just fine. Even just starting right into a warmup set if the motion feels good already.
At that point then stretching is a different form of working out or exercise. Which makes a certain kind of sense.
love a good foam roll sesh. it’s usually the first part of my warmup. I know the science is out on it’s actual benefits, but nothing helps with soreness and getting the body going like working out all the kinks on a roller.
sameeeee! It’s a form of self-massage, and massage is well understood more generally. it won’t make muscles longer but it’ll help a lot with adhesions, tender points and postural tension.
recently I’ve been getting some great results out of using a harder plastic massage ball for some areas, seems to get deep into my psoas, quads and calves especially. also love using a racked barbell to mobilize triceps, rotator cuff, and hamstrings! it hurts so good!
I still keep an old lacrosse ball in the gym bag for that exact reason