I've heard stretching is BS. True?

If you're trying to prevent injuries from most exercises that you normally do, then the answer, believe it or not, is yes. For most low-intensity activities like jogging, cycling, and swimming, there just isn't a lot of compelling medical evidence that stretching before or afterward makes a difference.

On the other hand, if you're doing exercises that require rapid contraction of your muscles, such as sprinting or playing basketball--anything during which you're jumping, diving, or quickly jagging from side to side--stretching can be beneficial. Those kinds of movements generate a lot of elastic energy, and you need to have enough flexibility built into the muscle-tendon unit to accommodate it.

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Moreover, maintaining flexibility by stretching can help you avert many of the minor strains from activities of daily life that take a toll on you over time. There's also a meditative element to it that helps you focus and relax. In that sense, stretching has value not as a preamble to exercise but as an independent, good-for-you activity in itself. So feel free to separate the two. You don't have to exercise and then stretch or vice versa.


What do you think?