Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights_ - Alex Hutchinson [52]
The precise details of a dynamic warm-up depend on the demands of the activity you’re preparing for, but Louisiana State University researcher Jason Winchester suggests breaking it down into three basic stages:
1. A low-intensity, rhythmic activity to elevate heart rate and body temperature; for example, at least five minutes of jogging, swimming, or biking.
2. A few minutes of dynamic drills that put your muscles through the range of motion you’ll be using; for example, squats, arm windmills, and skipping. Do 10 repetitions of each one.
3. Finish with some skill-specific motions to prepare for your activity. If you’re lifting weights, lift a few reps with a light load; before a tennis match, hit some easy ground strokes; or run a few relaxed sprints before a hard run.
These basic principles can be adapted for just about any sport or physical activity, focusing on motions that prepare your muscles for the challenges ahead. The more vigorous or explosive the activity, the more thoroughly you should warm up.
Will stretching after exercise help me avoid next-day soreness?
In 1986, researchers at the Free University of Amsterdam asked a group of volunteers to perform a set of strenuous exercises with one leg, while resting the other leg. Over the next three days, the scientists poked, prodded, and measured the legs in an effort to understand why certain exercises cause us to feel sore—not immediately after the exercise, but usually beginning the next day and often peaking two days later. One of the tests involved using electrodes to record the electrical activity in each leg, in order to look for differences between the sore leg and the rested leg. None were found. This was a very significant result, because it helped rule out a dominant theory of “delayed-onset muscle soreness,” or DOMS (see Chapter 3), that was first proposed in the 1960s. The theory argued that, after heavy exercise, damaged muscles went into spasm, blocking blood flow and causing the observed pain. The Dutch experiment put an end to that idea.
As often happens, the advice spawned by a discredited theory lived on long after the theory. Researchers in the 1960s had proposed that the best way to deal with these hypothetical spasms was to stretch the affected muscle, allowing normal blood flow to resume. Exercisers obediently began stretching after exercise in the hope of avoiding next-day soreness. And to this day, they still do.
Given that the spasm theory has been abandoned, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that studies of post-exercise stretching have found little or no effect on soreness. The most recent lab experiment, published in 2009, put a group of 20 Australian rowers through a series of grueling stair-climbing workouts (the muscle contractions required to go down stairs or down hills are particularly effective in causing soreness). Some of the rowers did a 15-minute static stretching routine after the workout, while others simply rested for 15 minutes; a week later, they switched. Over the three days following each workout, the researchers found no differences at all between the two groups in muscle strength, perceived soreness, or blood levels of a marker of muscle damage called creatine kinase.
Other researchers have tried similar experiments outside the lab. For instance, an Australian football team allocated different players to different recovery protocols, including either rest or a 15-minute post-game stretching session, each week over the course of 12 weeks. On a whole host of measures, including soreness, vertical jump, peak power on a stationary bike, and flexibility, there was no difference between the groups.
The trend in these studies is consistent. An independent review of 25 studies on the topic, published in 2008 by the Cochrane Collaboration, found “very