Most people when they think of developing a strong, muscular body automatically think of power exercises such as the bench press, squats, lat pull downs and the good old preacher curl. Exercises that focus on pushing and pulling movements. Cardiovascular exercises normally take a back seat unless you want to lose fat along the way. Stretching isn’t rated by us in strength development, because most of us think that because it’s a low intensity movement it’s purely for warming up or cooling down before or after our workouts. However stretching isn't merely a great way to cool down, it actually helps in making you stronger. The benefits of stretching have numerous effects on your weightlifting progress. Just remember when you stretch you should feel slight tension in your muscles, but no pain!
Stretching is your key to the following:
Increased Strength - Stretching actually helps to increase your muscular strength because it expands your range of motion, and range of motion literally applies to weightlifting. For example when you lift in a wider range of motion compared to a smaller range, you’re making use of more muscle fibres, making your muscles stronger.
Reduced Stress – We all know that stretching helps reduce the stress and tension in our exercised muscles, but did you know that a quick 20-mintue session of stretching can also release most of the tension that built up throughout an entire workday?
Improved Posture – Flexible muscles are your key to good posture, because stretching promotes balanced muscle tone in all the major joints in the body. This affects your strength training because good posture reduces stress and soreness in the muscles and joints, letting you get back to the gym faster.
Improved Speed & Reaction Time – if you’re an athlete you’re aware of how important agility is to top performance. Flexible muscles make you quicker on your feet. This allows you to run faster and react quicker.
Decreased Muscle Soreness - This means less time off from the gym and more time to devote to developing those muscles.
Ease of Movement – Stretching does more than improve sports performance. It makes simple daily tasks easier as well, by lessening the general stiffness in joints so you can bend down, reach up and lift things easily. Stretching will also affect the future of your joints by making you less likely to develop joint pain later in life.
Reduces Chances of Injury – More flexible muscles means less chance of injuring tight muscles during exercise. Take for example your hamstrings, the muscles that run down the back of your upper legs. I like to compare the hamstrings to an elastic band – the flexible hamstring has a lot of stretch; whereas the inflexible hamstring is that dried out elastic that breaks when it’s stretch too far.
