Stretch First To Run Slower
I thought this was interesting reading. Note that the study involved static stretching as opposed to dynamic stretching.
by Matt Fitzgerald
A marathon gives you plenty of time to warm up during the race.
A new study finds that static stretching before running reduces running economy and performance.
Whether, when, and how runners should stretch are hotly debated questions lately. A new study by researchers at Florida State University may settle the specific question of whether runners should engage in static stretching (held passive stretches such as toe touches) before running. Ten trained male runners participated in the study. On separate occasions, they ran for one hour on a treadmill, beginning with 30 minutes at a moderate pace and ending with a 30-minute performance test wherein the runners were instructed to cover as much distance as possible. The runners performed 16 minutes of static stretch for the major muscle groups of the lower body before one of the runs and just sat around for 16 minutes before the other.
On average, the runners ran 3.4 percent farther in the non-stretching performance test than they ran in the post-stretching performance test. Yet while they ran farther after not stretching, they burned 5 percent fewer calories, indicating that pre-run static stretching sabotaged running performance by reducing running economy. These results were published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Why would a static stretching warm-up make you run less efficiently? The authors of previous studies have speculated that static stretching warm-ups temporarily reduce musculoskeletal stiffness. While the word “stiffness” generally has negative associations with respect to athletic performance, a certain type of stiffness is beneficial to running performance. When you run, your legs function as springs that repeatedly bouncing off the ground, capturing “free” energy (i.e. energy that the body does not have to generate for itself) from each impact and using it to for forward thrust. Just as a loose mechanical spring (think of a worn automobile shock absorber) is less effective than a stiffer one, a less stiff leg (resulting from laxity at key muscle-tendon junctions) bounces less effectively off the ground during running. Consequently, the leg captures less “free” energy from the round and running economy is reduced.
Comments
This study seems like it's knocking down a straw man. Who advocates stretching cold muscles any more? The more helpful study would have compared performance between a group that ran for 10-15 minutes and then stretched versus another group that didn't stretch.
I posted this because while one would think that most would know about avoiding the static stretching of cold muscles, at virtually every race I enter I see people on the side of the road, before the start, going through their regiment of static stretches.
Thanks for posting the article. I think stretching has been so ingrained in the running culture it is ways useful to see different prospectives.
not surprising to see another study along the thread of "stretching is a waste of time". It's been the trend for a while now.
personally I'd be more interested in what the team was doing with the rest of their time- i.e. where in the training block they were, what their recovery programs included, did they exclude injured runners from the study, etc.
Ten whole runners in the study! And a 3.4% increase. I'm throwing out the entire study as not being statistically valid. Unless all the runners happened to have exactly the same vdot, the result could very well be a fluke.
We could run our own trial. ;-)