Just noticed a great article shared by Active Release Techniques Australia who posted this article “Stretching: The Truth” written by Gretchen Reynolds for The New York Times. The article discusses that most of us of adult age were taught stretching techniques and the importance of stretching before athletic activity, but one very important note is that athletic training, dynamic warm ups, and exercise science have all moved on past having your physical education teacher stress stretching before any and all activities. It’s been about 8 years since this article was published and yet whenever we talk to athletes in the South Jersey areas, they still tell us about how much static stretching they are doing and we offer up some tips on dynamic warm ups, it should not come as much of a shock to the patients. One particularly interesting statement in the article relates to golfers and states the following information:
“Even golfers, notoriously nonchalant about warming up (a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother), would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their clubhead speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks.”
Find the original article over at The New York Times:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html
When of my own personal favorite videos on how to properly mix stretching, dynamic warm up, and getting ready to go follows Colin Kaepernick as he prepares for a preseason workout with the San Francisco 49ers last year. In this video, Kaepernick, who is arguably one of the best all around athletes in the NFL shows off just about all of his best moves, stretching, foam rolling, foot work drills, planks for core work, speed drills and more.
If you actually sit down and take notes on the video, you will notice that Kaepernick foam rolls a few times through out his workout. Is your mind blown? If you are not doing a long drawn out foam rolling session at the end of your workouts, you can actually sprinkle it in for short periods of time during your workouts and, if you truly want to take it to another level, mixing it in with your core work, movements like planks, bridges, and box squats are fantastic if you can handle that level of activity.
Now this next link to a great dynamic warm up also packs a lot of humor, please don’t mind some of the language and some of the moments are impressions of people from Saturday Night Live, like Chris Farley’s famous “living in a van down the river”. One thing you notice about this video however is that JJ Watt as well does all kinds of dynamic movements before touching a single weight or accelerating faster than 50% of his max output.
Link to USA Today Article on JJ Watt’s workout warm up:
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/10/watch-j-j-watt-do-a-chris-farley-impression-while-working-out