Why You Should Stop Stretching at the Gym

Above is a pretty convincing argument for avoiding stretching before workout. For those who don’t feel like reading the whole thing here’s the TL;DR-

Warming up-Yes. Getting the blood flowing through a dynamic warm up helps prevent injury.

Static stretching- No. If you are lifting there is some benefit to having tighter muscles as it can create more force production.

An example would be let’s say you are squatting. Doing a dynamic warmup of lunges, squats and say some burpees is preferred over 15 minutes of leg stretches.

From the article- The researchers also found that stretching for more than 60 seconds before training had detrimental effects on force production. The reason is simple: tighter muscles are more explosive, thus increasing the contractile force and speed of muscle fiber activation

Intuitively, I think it has made sense to me so if you have ever wondered why we don’t stretch before workouts This is why. And now we have a few studies listed in the article to reenforce it.

What do you guys think?