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.

In last episode, which I'll link to in the show notes over at Quick and Dirty Tips.com,

you learned about five big mistakes that people make when they're stretching, including stretching

knotted muscles, stretching with poor posture, stretching yourself into a muscular imbalance,

stretching in a stressed out way, and stretching through pain. Today, we're going to jump right

into the last five stretching mistakes. So let's take a few deep breaths, limber up with a few

arm swings and leg swings,

and jump right in.

Mistake number six is stretching before strength. It's no secret that the more limber a muscle

is, the weaker it becomes. Just think about a rubber band. A long, stretchy rubber band is

far less strong than a tight springing rubber band. Now, a recent study on

runners found that runners were on average 13 seconds slower when they performed stretching,

specifically a static hold and stretch, immediately prior to a one mile uphill run. So much for those

toe touches before you go tackle the hill repeats. In fact, multiple

research studies have shown that static stretching can inhibit the amount of force that a muscle can

produce and limit physical performance in just about any jumping, running, or lifting activity

you might be doing after that stretch session. And if you say you're just doing stretching before your workout so you don't

get injured, then you should also know that further data has shown that static stretching doesn't even

reduce your risk of injury, which is one of the primary reasons that you may have been led to

believe you should do stretching before exercise. Now, I'm going to put links to all of these studies

and the show notes at quick and dirty tips.com, I'm going to put links to all of these studies in the show notes

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