To Stretch Or Not To Stretch: That Is The Question

By ilovecococakes April 08, 2016 dynamic stretching, dynamic yoga, foam roller, michelle, Nike Training Club, NTC app, pains, runner, running, static stretching, warmup, yoga

One thing that I've taken for granted before with working out was warm-up and stretching. I guess because I would get impatient holding poses for a few minutes. Ok fine, not minutes but seconds...but still, they felt like minutes to me. I wanted to get to the fun part already. But I realized that warm-up can make or break your work out. When I was younger, I would just get dressed and run out the door without as much as a neck stretch. I'd come back with an adrenaline high, pumped up to do Pilates or whatever workout that was scheduled that day. No pain in my calves, hamstrings, quads or any part of my body after a run. But then, that was almost a decade ago.

Times are different now. Sad to say, I'm older, heavier, and more stressed (haha! I really had to add that). Now, I experience aches and pains everywhere, after I run. I tried different stretching exercises or held the poses longer, thinking that that would solve the problem. My hip joints sometimes would feel like they'd want to dislocate themselves from my pelvis. Or my knees would feel like they were as brittle as peanut brittle, ready to crack at the slightest bump in the road. And my feet would feel like they've swollen up like the lips of Eddie Murphy from The Nutty Professor, inside my shoe. Have you ever felt that way?

But it's different with running. I've read that static stretching, which is basically holding a stretching position, doesn't really do much to runners. According to the article "Should you stretch before you run?" by Runner's World, it even mentioned that "static stretching has a dampening effect on strength and power."

WHAT???? Then what I've been doing was wrong after all???

An article I've read from Shape mentioned this:

"Static stretching is not the optimal way to warm-up before you run," Olson says. Believe it or not, you could actually strain your muscles with static stretching, and it might even slow you down. Instead, focus on getting oxygen to your muscles and warm them up—literally, Olson recommends. "Start out by walking and trotting: swing your arms; shrug your shoulders and slowly elevate your heart rate for about 10 minutes before you pick up your pace."That doesn’t mean you should skip stretching completely, Olson says. Just make sure to do it after your run, when your muscles are very warm and full of oxygen and nutrients; and then engage in static stretching, focusing on your leg, hip, and low-back muscles."

from thesmithwellallergykitchen.blogspot.com

Thank God for Google!!! Right when I would come home from a run or sometimes even during my cool down walk going home, I would research about the different aches and pains that I would feel in different areas of my body. And I've discovered that it's really helpful to warm-up before you run. Another thing I learned was that stretching and warm-up exercises have different results for runners. When I used to do High Intensity Interval Training in the gym not so long ago, we would do a combination of stretching like quad stretches and cobra poses, which we would hold for 10 counts and warm-up exercises like burpees and jump lunges for 10 reps. I felt that that combination helped my body get ready for the HIIT exercises that we did after.

No wonder!!! Now it makes sense.

So now, I do warm-up exercises instead of stretching pre-run. Here are some links to the warm-up exercises I do:

And for post-run, I do this Dynamic Yoga workout from the Nike Training Club app. (You can download it for free!)

Another thing that was helpful was my most recent equipment purchase: My foam roller! It helps ease out the muscle knots or when my lower body gets a little tight.

And on rare occasions that our (Joei and I) schedules coincide, we would Yoga together. Don't you agree that working out is more fun with a buddy?

I don't feel those achy breaky pains that I would feel before, except for the ones in my feet. I'll just write about it in my next post. Clue: it's something that every girl wants!!!