This Friday I will be talking to our PE Department about warming up and stretching before athletic events. As the head Strength Coach at my high school for the past several seasons, I have done a lot of looking into the best, and most efficient, ways to warm up players and prevent injuries.
You of course know the attack that has been launched on the old school “Static” stretching style. You know the drill… line up… feet together… 1 – 2 – 3 … right over left … so on and so forth. Great stuff, we all lived! But it isn’t the best way to do things! That much, most coaches are in agreement over.
Studies have shown that stretching before physical activity is about as effective as doing nothing at all before physical activity in preventing injury. That’s right, your 20 minute stretching routine is helping you as much as it would to just head straight out of the locker room and into your first drill.
This past season we went to a dynamic stretching routine. The key in dynamic stretching is to start with small movements to warm up the muscles, and work your way up to larger movements. I like the example of arm circles that we all used to do, going from little circles to big circles. It gets the idea across, though its not something we do. I like the idea of starting off with a short jog, to get the muscles warm. Then we work through a series of butt-kickers, high knees, lunges, etc. Get everything moving, working, getting loose. The result? Not a single muscle pull this season. And I know we’re not the only ones.
The funny thing about muscle pulls that I realize this season, is they’re the most contagious injury in sports. One kid blows a hammy, he goes to the trainer. Trainer can’t SEE anything, he just has to kind of trust that the kid is hurt. By the end of practice, when its time for conditioning, that hamstring pull has spread to at least 3 other kids (mostly freshmen). This season? None of that. We didn’t even have kids faking injuries, they didn’t see any real injuries they could emulate. Broken bones aren’t contagious. You don’t have one kid get hit in the junk, and ten minutes later a second kid collapse after mysteriously getting a phantom nut-shot. They just aren’t contagious. Eliminating muscle pulls changes a lot.
Static stretching has its place, at the end of the workout. It is good to be flexible! But do it at the end, when the athlete is warm and loose. In addition, some studies have shown that stretching a muscle makes it weaker. In different studies I have seen, they found the muscle took anywhere from 7 minutes to 60 minutes to recover!! We definitely don’t need that before a game.
Don’t change everything right away. Do your research, plan it out. Use your off-season as a guinea pig test. But don’t keep doing it the old way because it’s what you’ve always done. Stretching isn’t like offense and defense, you don’t have to only coach what you know.
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