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Hey, what's up, everyone? Thank you so much for checking out today's show. This is episode

18 of the Squat University podcast. The goal with each and every one of these shows is to bring you as much value-packed content

to help you move better in the gym and in life, decrease your bodies, aches, and pains,

and help you reach your true athletic potential.

Now, in today's show, we're going to talk all about mobility and specifically how stretching affects the body and whether or not you should

be doing it at all. Now, I guess we'll call this class then to stretch or not to stretch. So let's start

off with the most simple question. Why do we stretch? Well, the simple answer is that stretching

is used to improve flexibility and mobility.

That should be a pretty obvious answer.

Now, in physical therapy school, we're taught to stretch muscles in our patients that are either stiff or short

in order to help restore the muscle to what is considered normal flexibility.

Now in the strength and the conditioning world,

in the fitness world, stretches are often used to promote better quality of movement,

increased performance, or limit injury risk.

Over the past few decades, there have been a tremendous amount of research articles

published demonstrating the effectiveness

of stretching in both the medical and the strengthening conditioning field. So today we're going to be talking about it from both sides so that you can understand why they are used.

But here's the question that most people really have.

How does stretching really work?

Well, when a group of muscles, like the hamstrings, are stretched, like when you lay in

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