Quote Originally Posted by Wahine View Post
If you give stretches without evaluating their needs you're not doing them any good.
THAT's what should've been the lead for this story.

Probably without exception, we all (including the researchers and the reporters) originally learned to stretch in a group setting; many of us still do most of our stretching in group x; and even those who stretch individually, usually choose our stretches based on the sport or the particular activity. Even if we've been through PT for one thing or another, we probably haven't changed the way we stretch our uninjured parts.

We've watched the prescriptions evolve, from the ballistic pre-exercise stretching we used to do in grade school PE to the gradual dynamic pre-exercise ROM increases, and post-workout static stretches, that group x instructors are taught now.

So we think about stretching as similar to strength training: absolutely it has prescriptive therapeutic uses, and on the other side yes it's possible to injure yourself or create imbalances, but it's also generally beneficial if you use some common sense about balance, intensity, timing, etc.

I mean, that's what I usually get out of most of the news stories, and I don't hear that as being much different from what you're saying, Wahine, am I hearing you right?

WRT this particular news story, well, if it wasn't for people occasionally posting a link, or doing the crossword puzzles at my parents' and inlaws, I wouldn't even read that paper, and this is only a small example of why...