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Evidence Based Paper: Stretching Before A Workout

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Evidence-based Paper: Stretching Stretching before a workout has its own pros and cons. A patient wants to know if he should continue to stretch prior to his workouts even though he says that he has always done it and it helps him with his workouts. As an expert, I would recommend him to stop because stretching is not a warm up, stretching before workouts may increases injuries, and there are no real conclusive evidence that stretching before an exercise helps prevent injuries. Stretching is not a warm up. Many confuses stretching to be a warm up and sometimes may end up hurting themselves more than improving their performances. If you stretch before a warm up or use stretching as a warm-up before an exercise, you are elongating that specific muscle when it’s still cold which may result in injuries. It is also undermining your warm up if you stretch prior to the exercise. By pulling on the muscle before it had a chance to be activated, you are reducing your range of motion as well as decreasing your performance. In this scenario, you are already prepping your muscle for further injuries. Thus, I do not recommend stretching before an exercise because it should not be use prior to workouts. …show more content…

When stretching before exercising, your body may think that it’s at risk of being overstretched. Thus, the body starts making the muscles contract and becoming tenser. This will then reduce your range of motion and increases your risk for injuries. Pulling on a cold muscle is like pulling on a rubber band. They can only stretch so far before they snap. For example, I stretch my gastrocnemius before a run. During the run, I have a higher chance to pull a muscle because it has already been stretched prior to the run. Therefore, I do not recommend stretching prior to workouts because it may increase your chance of

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