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EricT · 03-10-2007, 11:12 AM

I want to mention a few things that I don't think a lot of people are really very aware of. I think it is because of all the "scientific studies" done of stretching, flexibility, and injury prevention that are nothing more than anecdotal crap.

1. Stretching by itself will not prevent injury. In fact if done wrong it can cause injury.

2. Flexibilitly is sport or activity specific. There is no real advantage in being more flexible than you need for whatever you are doing. And there are distinct disadvantages.

I remember seeing this old strongman competitor throw himself down into a front split. Impressive. And it proves the point that you can have huge, strong muscles and still be flexible. But beyond that it was largely meaningless. There are not, after all, any front split events in strongman comps. And if stregth doesn't follow that extreme range of motion, well then, you could have a problem.

With MMA, Andrew, this is going to be very important. The different aspects of it will require different types of flexibility. If you look at grappling you need to have plenty of flexibility, for instance, in the legs and hips. But you also have to be able to exert tremendous strength at whatever range you are working the joints in. If you do a bunch of static stretching and get real flexible at static stretching, it won't mean much when you are grappling. The mega article goes into all this so it is important to read it carefully and not just skip to the exercises.

In terms of strength training and bodybuilding you only need enough flexibility to perform your exercises with a full range of motion. Going beyond that range of motion is likely to make you weaker. If you have flexibility issues that is causing you problems then you need to work on that. Also flexibility imbalances, which are, btw, more likely to cause injury than just general lack of flexibility in the basic slow movements.

But once you are flexible enough, and you don't have any distinct tightness which is causing problems, as Troy mentioned, then all you need to do is maintain flexibility with some appropriate light work AFTER you workout (you can do dynamic stretching before weightwork as a warmup and if you have very tight muscles, but limit it as it can take a lot out of you.) If you do have very bad flexibility the quickest way to liberate range of motion while maintaining and even increasing strength is PNF stretching.

But if all you are interested in is stength training/bodybuilding then once you have enough flexiblity you only need to maintain it. You don't have to build on it and progress in any way. You will get all the benefits of improved recovery, etc. I think many people don't do stetching because they thing they need to treat it just like they do their weight training and make it much more daunting and time consuming that is needs to be.