To all you avid stretchers!!
I rescently attended a course by Glenn Hunter and we got side tracked into
talking about the article in question (1538 squaddies stretching etc.) and
he felt this was a very well conducted piece of research (and he is a lot
cleverer than me!!) and he was questioning whether pre-sport stretching may
actually be damageing.
His initial response was that most injuries within sports do not occur at
end of range and therefore why would elongateing the muscle produce any
benefits to the sportsperson.
Also he felt that what may be occuring is with the elongation of the muscle
a decreased amount of fluid would be retained within the tendon thus
decreasing the strength of the tendon. This is because much of the
non-contractile tissues of our body rely on their viscoes-elastic properties
for strength (essentially by stetching the msucle you are going to thin it
as it is only made of a finite amount of tissue). Mr. Hunter himself says
that this is far from evidence based and we had a long discussion trying to
think of a way to produce evidence and got approximately no where!!
If you want a fabulously bad bit of evidence I never ever stretch and have
played hockey/basketball/football for 14 years and have never missed a game
through a pulled muscle. Now there is an evidence base for you!!
John Willenbruch PT
P.S. I thought it was a very good bit of sarcasm.
>Henry, I did read Linda's email carefully. It seems, however, that you
>didn't read mine. Otherwise you wouldn't have said you agree with me
>AND "stretching definately helps".
>
>My email was in agreance with Linda's, in a way, basically saying that
>despite the fact so many people claim stretching is effective in the
>prevention of injury, there has been no conclusive answer reached (by
>RCT or otherwise) concerning the relationship.
>
>And concerning sample size... You said to Linda that 1538 people is
>too large a sample to control certain factors (but that's exactly what
>large samples are for, aren't they? to eliminate, or make
>insignificant, slight variations between subjects?), however a sample
>size of 1 ("stretching definitely helps to prevent injury because I
>always stretch before and after sport") is sufficient?
>
>Please pardon my poor use of sarcasm. I haven't quite got the
>technique perfected. ;)
>
>Luke Harris.
>
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