The following website features an interesting article on Stretching Myths and 
Facts that is being quoted quite widely at the moment:

 http://www.physsportsmed.com/cover.htm  >>

I recently wrote a few comments on this very thorough review for our 
supertraining discussion group that may also be of interest here 
(http://www.egroups.com/group/supertraining ).

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Several of us have been questioning the necessity for the use of   dedicated 
"stretching" and "warming up" sessions for many  years, so it is   good to 
see a review of this stature examining these issues in depth (see Siff MC 
"Facts and Fallacies of Fitness"  2000).   I also like to point out that 
stretching exercise (which are meant to deform tissues) are not necessarily 
the same as flexibility exercises (which are meant to increase   range of 
movement).

There are several interesting issues in Shrier's article on stretching facts 
and myths (The Physician & Sports Medicine -Vol 28, No. 8 - Aug 2000), such 
as this one:

< With respect to alleviating the pain associated with stiffness, the weight 
of the evidence suggests that the decrease in stiffness is not as important 
as the increase in "stretch tolerance". Briefly, an increase in stretch   
tolerance means that patients feel less pain for the same force applied to 
the muscle. The result is increased range of motion, even though true 
stiffness does not change. This could occur through increased tissue strength 
  or analgesia; however, increased stretch tolerance that occurs immediately 
after stretching must be caused by an analgesic effect because tissue 
strength does not increase during 2 minutes of stretching. Unfortunately,   
evidence of a possible analgesic effect is recent, and the underlying 
mechanism is unknown. After weeks of stretching, increases in stretch 
tolerance could theoretically occur because stretch-induced hypertrophy may   
increase tissue strength , and/or an analgesia effect may be present.   >

***The use of the term "analgesic" may not be entirely appropriate.   While 
there may be an as yet identified analgesic effect associated with intense 
stretching, this may be greatly overshadowed by an accommodation effect which 
changes the Rating of Perceived Effort (or pain) with regular imposition of 
progressively increased stretching loads.   This happens with all lifting - 
the load progressively feels lighter and the lifter then can execute more 
reps or a heavier 1 rep max.   

This is not necessarily the same as the so-called disinhibition effect which 
is an objective altering of nervous processes in the body - it is an effect 
that is more subjectively psychological in origin (even though it also 
obviously involves neural processes).
 
Despite the very useful and interesting nature of this review, the reference 
list was disappointingly small and it made no use of some really relevant 
work by Russian scientists such as Iashvili (e.g. see Ch 3 of Siff & 
Verkhoshansky  "Supertraining"   1999). 
 
At least, the high profile given to this article will tend to make fitness 
pros, therapists and sports coaches start wondering a lot more about all 
those traditional stretching and warming up ideas.

Dr Mel C Siff  
Denver, USA




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