Stretching prepares your body for exercise
Stretching before exercise is a sacred ritual, but researchers have been finding that it actually slows you down. Florida State researchers recently showed that stretching before a run makes you about 5 per cent less efficient, meaning you have to burn more energy to run at the same pace. This year, Italian researchers studying cyclists discovered why stretching is counter-productive. They found evidence that toe-touching stretches change the force-transmission properties of muscle fibres and alter the brain signals to muscle, reducing exercise efficiency by about 4 per cent. Furthermore, there’s insufficient scientific evidence that pre-exercise stretching reduces injury risk.
