Thread: Stretching
View Single Post
Old 03-31-2012, 08:30 PM   #28
lbb
Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
United_States
Offline
Re: Stretching

Quote:
Carl Thompson wrote: View Post
I was particularly interested in Janet's answer because I gather that she has done some research and could perhaps indicate some relevant studies. Do you think you could do the same? Otherwise, it is just you telling me there is a danger of damage. It's a complex subject and evidence for risk in a particular kind of stretching for one activity (running is the usual example) will not be the same as in another. That's logical. The question is what are the risks for us and what are the benefits?
Hi Carl,

In the sentence that I bolded, what does "another" refer to? Another activity? Or another type of stretching?

If you're asking about stretching, and different types or ways to approach stretching, my own feeling about risk vs. benefit is that (to my understanding) if you're stretching in a way that will get you the most benefit, you're also stretching in a way that minimizes risk. Of course, there are plenty of low-risk ways of "stretching" that won't get you much benefit, if any...they won't do any harm, but they won't do any good either. But the approaches to stretching that produce the most benefit are also quite low-risk. They just don't produce results overnight, which is why (particularly among those who are stretching for flexibility, or who measure the results of their stretching by flexibility) people get impatient and sometimes resort to risky shortcuts. We used to have a saying in my TKD days: "anyone can do the splits...once..."
  Reply With Quote