Does Stretching After a Workout Help Muscle Growth?

Ever questioned if stretching earlier than or after your exercise actually makes a distinction? Or if stretching helps muscle progress? You’re not alone! Within the health world, the controversy is scorching: must you stretch earlier than hitting the gymnasium, or put it aside for after your sweat session? Let’s dive into this intriguing subject and uncover how stretching might be the key to enhancing your health routine and muscle beneficial properties!

Understanding Stretching

Stretching is a bodily exercise that includes lengthening and flexing the muscular tissues and connective tissues. 

Once we stretch, our muscular tissues and the encompassing tissues, akin to tendons and fascia, endure a sequence of helpful modifications. Because the muscle fibers lengthen, the connective tissues stretch, permitting for higher flexibility and vary of movement. This course of helps to realign muscle fibers, scale back rigidity, and improve blood movement to the realm, delivering important vitamins and oxygen. 

Moreover, stretching will help scale back the chance of damage by getting ready the muscular tissues and connective tissues for extra intense bodily exercise. The elevated blood movement additionally aids in eradicating waste merchandise like lactic acid, which may accumulate throughout train and contribute to muscle soreness.

​Fascia is the Foremost Perpetrator for Tight Muscle groups

 Whenever you stretch, you additionally stretch your fascia, serving to it keep versatile and wholesome. This flexibility can forestall tightness and discomfort, which may result in accidents. Retaining your fascia in good condition is crucial for general physique perform and may even assist in muscle progress.

Is it Higher to Stretch Earlier than or After a Exercise? 

I’m within the area of Bodily Remedy, and my reply to that query is BOTH! Nonetheless, it will depend on what kind of stretching. 

There are two varieties of stretching: static stretches and dynamic stretches. Static stretching includes holding a stretch in a single place, like while you stretch your calf muscular tissues. Dynamic stretching includes energetic actions, like excessive knees or butt kicks, that put together your muscular tissues for exercise.

Dynamic Stretching 

Doing dynamic stretches or “warm-ups” earlier than a exercise prevents your muscular tissues from going into shock. It progressively will increase the depth and helps heat up the muscular tissues, bettering flexibility and lowering damage threat. Goal for 5 to 10 minutes of dynamic stretching earlier than your exercise. Listed below are some examples:

1- Shoulder Circles: Loosen up your shoulders and rotate them in a round movement to heat up your arms and shoulders.

3 – Butt Kicks: Kick heels towards your glutes, alternating legs, to interact the muscular tissues behind your legs.

Static Stretching

In static stretching, you maintain a stretch to elongate the muscle, which is more practical for growing muscle size in comparison with dynamic stretching. Nonetheless, performing static stretches earlier than a exercise could be counterproductive as a result of your muscular tissues will probably be in a relaxed state, and transitioning to intense train would possibly confuse them. This shift from leisure to exertion can scale back effectiveness and improve the chance of damage. A Harvard study even discovered that stretching a “chilly, tight muscle” earlier than train might result in damage.

Listed below are three examples of static stretching with transient directions:

1 – Hamstring Stretch

• Beginning Place: Sit on the ground with one leg prolonged straight in entrance of you and the opposite leg bent with the only of your foot in opposition to the interior thigh of the prolonged leg.
• Directions: 
  • Attain ahead towards the toes of the prolonged leg, holding your again straight.
  • Maintain the stretch for 20-30 seconds, feeling a mild pull behind your thigh.
  • Change legs and repeat.

3 – Quadriceps Stretch

• Beginning Place: Stand together with your ft hip-width aside and maintain onto a wall or chair for steadiness if wanted.
• Directions: 
  • Bend one knee and produce your heel up towards your buttocks.
  • Grasp your ankle with the hand on the identical facet and gently pull it in the direction of your buttocks, feeling a stretch within the entrance of your thigh.
  • Maintain the stretch for 20-30 seconds, then swap legs.

For the core, this submit has static stretches : 7 Best Core Stretching Exercises for a Stronger Core.

Diaphragm Stretches: 10 Best Diaphragm Stretching Exercises

Toe Stretches: Why You Need to Start Stretching Your Toes

How Does Stretching Assist?

• Stretch-Mediated Hypertrophy: (talk about in additional in-depth beneath)
  • This fancy time period implies that stretching can really assist muscular tissues develop.
  • Stretching after exercises can result in stretch-mediated hypertrophy, the place muscle fibers develop as a result of they’re stretched.
  • This will result in vital will increase in muscle mass over time.
• Muscle Restoration and Blood Movement:
  • Stretching helps improve blood movement to the muscular tissues, aiding within the removing of waste merchandise like lactic acid.
  • This will scale back muscle soreness and pace up restoration time.
• Flexibility and Vary of Movement:
  • Common stretching can improve flexibility and allow you to obtain a full vary of movement.
  • That is essential for general muscle perform and will help forestall damage.
  • For instance, stretching the hip flexors will help with decrease again ache.
• Harm Prevention:
  • Dynamic stretches earlier than train can scale back the chance of damage by getting ready the physique for bodily exercise.
• Ache Aid:
  • Stretching helps the physique regulate to exercise, particularly for these with persistent ache.

Does Stretching Assist Muscle Progress? 

Now we have mentioned the distinction between dynamic and static stretching above and when to make use of which. Now, we are going to talk about whether or not stretching can improve muscle progress. 

The reply is Sure! After you have got accomplished a exercise session, chances are you’ll do an intense stretching, sometimes with weights, to stretch the fascia (fibrous sheath round muscular tissues that may limit progress). Within the Journal of Applied Physiology, they discovered a possible 318% progress in 28 days. 

To realize this, use a heavy weight to stretch the focused muscle group post-workout. Listed below are three examples of intense stretches utilizing weights to assist improve muscle progress:

1 – Dumbbell Chest Stretch

• Beginning Place: Lie on a flat bench with a dumbbell in every hand. Maintain the dumbbells above your chest together with your arms absolutely prolonged and palms dealing with one another.
• Directions: 
  • Slowly decrease the dumbbells out to the perimeters in a large arc, holding a slight bend in your elbows.
  • Decrease them till you are feeling a deep stretch in your chest.
  • Maintain the stretched place for 20-30 seconds, then deliver the dumbbells again to the beginning place.
  • This targets the pectoral muscular tissues.

2 – Dumbbell Pullover Stretch

• Beginning Place: Lie on a bench together with your higher again and shoulders supported, holding a dumbbell with each arms above your chest.
• Directions: 
  • Slowly decrease the dumbbell behind your head in an arc, holding your arms barely bent.
  • Stretch so far as snug to really feel a deep stretch in your lats and chest.
  • Maintain the place for 20-30 seconds, then increase the dumbbell again to the beginning place.

3 – Barbell Squat Stretch

• Beginning Place: Stand with a barbell resting in your higher again and shoulders, together with your ft shoulder-width aside.
• Directions: 
  • Decrease your self right into a deep squat place, holding your chest up and again straight.
  • Go as little as you possibly can whereas sustaining correct type, feeling a deep stretch in your quads, hamstrings, and glutes.
  • Maintain the squat place for 20-30 seconds earlier than returning to a standing place.

These stretches will help enhance flexibility and muscle progress by elongating the muscle fibers and growing blood movement to the focused areas.

The Takeaway

Stretching after a exercise gives quite a few advantages, from elevated flexibility to muscle progress. It’s an important a part of any exercise routine, serving to to forestall damage and enhance restoration. Whether or not you’re doing resistance coaching, tai chi, or simply having fun with bodily exercise, make stretching a daily a part of your health plan.

By understanding the advantages of stretching and incorporating it into your routine, you possibly can obtain higher muscle progress, flexibility, and general well being. So, subsequent time you end a exercise, don’t skip the stretch! Your muscular tissues will thanks.

References

1. J. Antonio and W. J. Gonyea. Progressive stretch overload of skeletal muscle leads to hypertrophy earlier than hyperplasia. 01 SEP 1993 https://doi.org/10.1152/jappl.1993.75.3.1263
2. https://www.well being.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/ask-the-doctor-stretching-before-exercise

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