If a person is excessively tight in certain areas this can place abnormal stress on the surrounding joints and structure. By lengthening this spastic or shortened muscle group, stress can be reduced or relieved. But what about injury prevention?
Many recent studies have suggested that stretching poses no effects on the prevention of injuries that may occur during a sporting event. Some studies have even proven that a static stretching routines can actually cause a detrimental effect to a muscles performance (Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2009 Dec 18).
Static stretching seems to have been thrown by the way side for pre-performance warm-up routines due to recent research, but this doesn’t mean you should just start jumping off of the couch to go run a marathon or play in a football game. There are many different, effective, ways to warm up your body to prepare it for battle. The USTA has a great dynamic warm up on their web site (http://dps.usta.com/usta_master/usta/doc/content/doc_437_217.pdf). This warm-up will help increase the blood flow to a person’s tissues and decrease the likelihood of injury. Dr. Johnathan Haggerty highly recommends the participation of some form of active warm up before any athletic event. If you have any questions please contact us at info@thewinchesterinstitute.com.