I am blatantly stealing the idea for Random Friday Thoughts from Eric Cressey, a very intelligent and effective strength coach who deals with a lot of baseball players and who I’ve learned a lot from (and continue to learn a lot from).
1. “If you perform static stretching before working out, you’re going to get injured.”
If this were true then there would have been a lot more exercise injuries in the 80’s and 90’s as that’s what the dogma of the day was – to warm up, you do static stretching.
But no, people weren’t exploding their muscles because they did a few stretches before working out.
Static stretching before workouts can be very useful if they’re used to inhibit a tonic muscle – in layman’s terms – if you have a muscle that works when it’s not supposed to, static stretching can shut it off, allowing the proper muscle(s) to be worked.