stretching

[mark]

In another forum Yowai stated "Stretching weakens the muscles and leaves it susceptible to damage. Only stretch after a workout. Stretching before a kendo class makes no sense."

His comment seems to totally contradict my understanding of the importance and usefullness of stretching.

How do you guys stretch? Do you stretch before Kendo, after, both not at all?

[nodachi]

I do both. Current sports training theories are still disagreeing on this. One school of thought says you should do it before. Another school goes with that not doing any good because your muscles are not warmed up yet supposedly, but says stretching after will keep you in good condition.

I do both because it is comfortable for me. You should do whatever you believe makes you feel the best and most flexible and safe.

[Neil Gendzwill]

Best advice I have is that you should stretch before, but break a light sweat first. The traditional bouncing for a few seconds isn't enough, so when I run a warmup I get people running around the dojo. After a few laps of regular running and suriashi, then we stretch. Stretching afterwards is a great idea but unfortunately we always push against the end of our time block and don't allow time for it.

[supernils]

We do a "warm up" before practice to liquidize the joints, to increase blood circulation and to increase body temperature.
The ligaments and mucles works better when they've a slightly heigher temperature than usual.
You shouldn't stretch to much before practice since it it makes it harder for ligaments and mucles to keep the joint in place. They should be warm but not stretched. So i suggest running jumping and such in the warm up. Start at a lower pace and then accelerate. You should sweat some.

After practice we do normal stretching.

[kendomushi]

Light stretching before and normal stretching before bed the same day. If I don't do the bedtime stretch, I tend to wake up feeling older and more stiff than usual.

[Phlebas]

'Scuse the tangential question, but I've heard differing opinions on whether "warming up" before stretching needs to be exercise. So, my rather OT question for the experts is:

With the sole purpose of stretching in mind, does warming up in, say, a bathtub equate to the same thing as warming up muscles by light exertion? In other words, is the question of warming up before stretching merely a temperature issue, or is it more beneficial to allow the muscles to build up lactic acid (or some other byproduct of exercise) before stretching them?

[supernils]

To just "get warm" in a sauna or a tub does help some. What that does not do though, is lubricate the joints. You need to move the joints to do that.
Moving is also more effective to get the cirkulation going.

If you want to increase general flexibility you can do stretching in an Ofuro (jap. hot tub). After doing that for a week I could put my belly on my thighs with straight legs without serious pain.

[Old Warrior]

We do a light workout that eventually gets to every joint from the ankles, knees, back, wrists, achilles tendons, kneck, etc. The sweat does not start to flow, however, until we get to suburi.