UKC

I'm wondering what is the best time to do stretching exercises?
Somebody told me better not to stretch before and during climbing because it puts strain on the muscle.
I usually stretch after climbing.
At home home I do stretching exercises in the morning and before going to bed.
What would be the best time to do stretching?

In reply to douwe:
My understanding is that you can do dynamic stretches before exercise and you should leave static stretches until after exercising.
Things like windmills with your arms, making circles with your feet and legs are all fine to get warmed up, but anything where you hold the stretch for a period of time should be avoided until after you have finished your exercise.
There is an article on here by Isabel Berg about stretching, it's probably worth having a read.

In reply to douwe:

What dandan just said.
I usually skip for 5 to 10 mins first then do some arm windmills leg throws and lunges climb increasingly harder routes then bring it down finish off with some light stretches.

In reply to douwe:
As above; dynamic before, static afterwards. Dynamic stretching raises muscle temperature and gets more blood and oxygen to them ready for exercise. Static stretching has also been shown to have a negligible effect and potentially even reduce maximum power within a short time period (Source: http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2005/08000/EFFECTS_OF_STATIC_STR...

Save the static stretching for after your session for when the muscles are all tight and need loosening up for best recovery.

In reply to douwe:

There have been some interesting contributions to this thread so far, but all of the above posters have missed a rather salient point; that if you want to get good, and I mean really good, at stretching, you have to put in the time.
I usually do four exercise sessions a week; one is structured around trying boulder problems at my local wall, with 90% of the time being spent looking around for more holds for each route and muttering darkly about 'incomplete f*cking routesetting', while the other three are very much focused on stretching.
This means that I usually hop in the Octavia and head to the wall, and warm up by stretching my hamstrings while I'm in the queue to pay in. I then generally spend an hour or so stretching in the middle of the bouldering area, grab a coffee, do a little traversing to warm up again for my stretches, and then do another hour of stretching. Sometimes I warm down by prowling around the roped climbing areas in the hope of being able to lecture someone on their shoddy belaying, but if I'm not feeling it (increasingly often these days - thanks a lot Al Gore) I'll head home and finish off my warmdown after a high-protein meal by watching Jurassic Park and imitating Jeff Goldblum's hand movements.

In reply to Valkyrie1968:

Yes, of course stretching is for pussies and I, like any real man would do, drive to the wall / crag and jump straight on the hardest route available then, of course without warming down, stretching or any of the nonsense, head down to the bar and slam down some beers. I just wanted to see who would comment on a post about something so silly.

@rest of the replies;
Thanks. In the bouldering gym I see a lot of people doing static stretches before a session. Some people go through a whole yoga routine it seems. It just made me wonder.

The emerging modern scientific view is that stretching most muscles for most sports is at best a waste of time - (and often actually harmful). The question in one scientific study reported during this last year was, How _much_ does stretching weaken muscular performance?

The obvious exception for climbing is to get more Range-of-Motion in lateral hip rotation, i.e. pressing the knees outward and backward - in a "plié" configuration (to get the buttocks closer to the wall for front-facing balancy face-climb moves.) Stretching is valuable for that.

Possibly another exception for climbing might be the ability to step the foot up onto higher holds. However that is mostly a _strength_ problem. But then after you've first developed the strength to lift the weight of your leg much higher than any normal person, only then is there some Range-of-Motion flexibility concern with getting the foot up ridiculously high.
Most climbers already have sufficient _passive_ flexibility (by pulling the knee up with their hands) to step much higher -- what they lack is the special muscular strength to move the knee up that high while the hands are busy doing other things.

Ken

P.S. Theory:
It would be a rather unexpected result, if millions of years of fiercely selective mammalian evolution (or divine design?) has resulted in the great majority of human (and animal?) individuals developing muscles of the wrong length.

Yet more unexpected that almost all of them with muscles that are wrong in the same direction: Too short.
You'd think that with such a supposedly inaccurate process of design + development, that some significant number of humans (and animals) would have muscles that are too long - (and would be getting special treatments to shorten them).

I can believe that a small minority of humans (and animals) has muscles that are too short, but the idea that the great majority of us have this problem seems rather implausible.

In reply to kenr:

Most (many?) of us don't live lives that evolution designed us for - i.e. sitting down in front of a computer all day

In reply to Valkyrie1968:

Some good points there. I've actually dropped the climbing bit form my stretching sessions and have found it's helped a lot.

In reply to Bulls Crack:

Very glad to hear it - this seems to be the thing that really holds a lot of people back. Stretching may help climbing, but climbing really doesn't do much for your stretching ability.
To the OP - apologies if any disrespect was read into my words. I was under the impression that you were interested in pushing your stretching, but I now realise you're more interested in it as a supplementary pursuit; to each their own!

In reply to kenr:

you only need to look at the flexibility children have compared to most adults to see why stretching is recomended so much, it's not about being born with short muscles it's about your muscles becoming stiff and inflexible, often not at a rate equal to each other.

There are people I know who have incredible flexibility but never stretch, not everyones so lucky. Go to a physio for almost any injury and streching will be part of your recovery exercises. Often the reason you're there is that there's an inbalance in opposing muscle groups, muscles are tigher than others, some stronger or weaker. If you have tight muscles then keeping them all equally flexible is preferable to waiting till your injured and then doing it. If you have overly weak muslces or like many climbers you train the pulling not the pushing muslces then strengthening your weaker muscles is a good idea too.

The emerging research is interesting but I'm not sure it's always the best idea to disregard the old advice in favour of new research, often carried out by sports scientists looking at peak performance in athletes. For the mere mortals among us who, like features says sit at a desk all day, the standard old fashioned advice of keeping your muscles flexible is probably going to be the best bet for keeping the majority of us out of the physios chair.

In reply to kenr:
?


Shouldn't that be a 'pile' configuration?

In reply to kenr:

Incorrect on a number of levels. The strength power losses from stretching are due to viscoelastic stress relaxation which is temporary. If you do a sport specific warm-up you should even be able to attenuate this process.

Supports above.

Yes.

However that is mostly a _strength_ problem. But then after you've first developed the strength to lift the weight of your leg much higher than any normal person, only then is there some Range-of-Motion flexibility concern with getting the foot up ridiculously high.
Partially correct.



You are overgeneralising here.




The muscle 'length' typically doesn't change, generally what varies is the ability to tolerate the sensation of stretch into the lengthened positions. Injuries and adhesions excluded, these will show changes in 'length.'


The hypermobile people (gymnasts etc) face this issue, that's why they have to do a lot of strengthening to stabilise their joints.

Again it's more a matter of stretch tolerance. also for every 'short' muscle you are likely to find a 'long' antagonist. As pointed out by others, we evolved as hunter-gatherers and now are largely desk-bound, diet also looks an issue.

In reply to douwe:
Another study confirms: Neither passive nor ballistic stretching "should not be recommended before a RTS [resistance training sessions]" - Both forms of stretching significantly reduce the number of reps you can perform during a lower body workout.

www.suppversity.com | Sá, Marcos A., et al. "Acute Effects of Different Stretching Techniques on the Number of Repetitions in A Single Lower Body Resistance Training Session." Journal of Human Kinetics 45.1 (2015): 177-185.