Stretching: To do or not to do?

  As any athlete knows,  there is the age old debate over the importance of stretching.  To stretch before working out or to stretch after working out or even during your workout?  Recent studies suggest that stretching before doesn't necesaril prevent injury or muscle soreness.  In fact it is believed that it doesn't even prevent serious sports injuries.  So why do it?  Well, really you don't have to.  Instead you should do a warm-up and cool-down.  A warm-up combined with stretchng has some unbelieveable results.  If you warm-up yuor muscles by completing a short jog or some other cardio and then stretch your muscles you get an increased range of motion!
   If you are injury-prone, like I seem to be, then it is believed the best way to prevent injuries is to actually limit the amount of stretching before exercising and increase the warm-up time.  Some of the benefits of a warm-up include:  increased muscle, body and blood temperature, improved range of motion, blood vessels dialate and more efficient cooling.
    A great warm-up for a runner is to jog for a while and to add a few sprints into a routine to make sure that all the muscle fibers are engaged.

Today's Lesson: Just remember that stretching a cold muscle increases the risk for pulls and tears! So DON'T DO IT!!!
Rocking out to: Runaway by Love and Theft