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I had heard that it was bad, since it made you more likely to injure yourself.

If we are talking about more likely to injure yourself we are looking at percentages of a small percentage to begin with. Imagine all the times you ever played basketball... if you are me, it hasn't been a lot, but we will call it 100 times. Now, according to some research, those people with the highest and lowest flexibility are 2.2-2.4 times as likely to get injured. This would still only translate to 2 games of basketball out of 100 where I might twist my ankle. Not bad odds, perhaps.

Going onto an activity that I have far more experience with, lifting. In the more than 16 years I have been in the gym I can count the number of actual injuries from lifting on one hand. So... um, I hate math. We will assume that I lift on the average of 3 days a week (it is more than that) and that I am in the gym 45 weeks a year (again, more than that) and you get some number that looks like (3x45) (x16) = 2160 days in the gym... and five injuries. Roughly every 432 trips to the gym I'll get injured. Double that and I'll get injured once every 216 trips... or about every 72 weeks. Now, we are NOT talking life or death here. Of course these numbers are just to give you an example of how small this "double the incidence" factor is.

Most people do not need to be extremely flexible. I kinda keep on track by making sure I can touch my fingers to the floor if I'm leaning over to touch my toes. I could push that and figure out how to do the splits, but that isn't necessary. I could also figure out how to put my legs behind my head, but that would not do anyone any good unless I was interested in viewing my proctology exam first hand. So if we maintain a reasonable amount of flexibility overall, we stand the greatest chance of being healthy.

Talking about static streching, I agree, but I wouldn't make a blanket statement like "streching before lifting is bad". Dynamic streching, as well as warm up sets need to be done, blood needs to be moving into the muslces, and they need to be flexible to lift, or you will hurt yourself.

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Absolutely. Like Pity said. But to be fair I am sure that John was talking about static stretching. Most people when they say stretching mean like you did in gym class. A good dynamic mobility warmup is just the thing.

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.

Agree. My pre-workout routine tends to be a lot of heating areas that are sore stiff from my night's sleep (the wife allows the dogs in our bed, I have no control over this and after over ten years of marriage I don't bother to fight it anymore), I roll on the foam roller a bit to loosen up my back and legs, do a little dynamic stretching then head out to the garage for my warmups with weight. I actually only static stretch before bedtime... maybe 5-10 minutes while I'm waiting for the wife to take out her contacts and do whatever other voodoo she does while she is in there.

Honestly, I have never given much thought to whether stretching before bed helps or hurts me.... Now I kinda wonder.

Oh. It all makes sense now. Eric, I didn't mean just a certain type, it was a blanket-type, like HG said. I had heard it like that, that any stretching is bad. I'll let others know.

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I still feel good for defending you . Good on ya. Serves me right for assuming, hehe.

I think if you are going to static stretch then before bed is a good time. Of course there is the whole thing of never stretch a cold muscle. But although I HAVE injured myself doing a passive stretch (that's right folks it CAN happen) it was being downright stupid on my part that did it.

But I'm kind of in the same place. Certain parts I used to static stretch religously (like hams) I've found I'm better off not bothering with and other parts (like hip flexors) I need to keep up with some static stretching. I need to stretch my hip abductors religously. I need to stretch my upper traps and sternomastowhatever. I don't need to stretch my lower back (hard lesson learnt from many years of trying). Need to stretch itb, piriformis.

I've made a lot of recent changes and I've discoverd the main three keys for me to be hip, ankls, and thoracic spine mobility (religously).

Yet none of that other stuff do I need to do religously except maybe traps. Mostly my pre-workout mobiltiy stuff takes care of it and that has some static stretching built into it for certain parts, albeit for short times. And I have gotten into doing some supplemental mobility postworkout like squat drills and such.

That was not everything of course and I didn't mention foam rolling for pretty much everything, haha.

Shoulders of course is a whole nother thing and it has a life unto itself but I would mention that the pecs and lats and teres major (internal shoulder rotators) need to be stretched for most of us and I like to do that post-workout after any pressing or pulling.

curious: what kind of shoulder stretching do you do? that's where i kinda....lack

You know where I am crazy stiff? My neck. Seriously, my neck has limited mobility, no traumatic incident. I blame yoke walking on this, in part. The other part goes back to the whole bed+dogs thing. I rarely sleep in a natural position.