Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Believe it or not, stretching is actually quite a bit of a controversial topic among personal trainers and exercise professionals.

There's a variety of opinions when it

comes to the best time to stretch, which stretches are best, how long to stretch, or even whether

you should be stretching at all. I hinted at some of these issues in my episode, Does Yoga Burn

Calories, which I'll link to in the show notes over at quick and dirty tips.com.

In that episode, I dispelled the myth that you actually burn fat with the stretching

you do in a yoga class. And in the episode, How to Get More Flexible, which I'll also link to

in the show notes over at quick and dirty tips.com, you learn that traditional stretches, such as

standing and reaching for your toes, really are not an ideal way to truly improve your flexibility, your range of motion, or your mobility.

In today's episode, which is part one of a two-part series on stretching, you're going to learn everything else you need to know about stretching,

including the top 10 stretching mistakes and also when to stretch and how to stretch.

Let's start with stretching knots, which is the first mistake that stretchers make.

In a recent article I wrote about mobility over at Ben Greenfield Fitness.com, I pointed out the fact that when you're exercising frequently, your muscle fibers can easily get cross-linked, nodded, and stuck to one another in a pattern called an adhesion.

Now, think of these adhesions or knots in your muscle, like a rope with a knot right in the middle. If you pull on both ends of that rope,

what happens? Well, the knot gets tighter and more difficult to untie. This is how stretching

can make things worse if you have adhesions, knots, and other tissue issues. So how do you get

rid of knots? It all begins with doing soft tissue work

before you launch into a stretching program or begin stretching every day. Soft tissue work includes

things like foam rolling, deep tissue massage, using golf or tennis balls against tight, knotted

areas in your body, and finding, then eliminating all those hard

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