FACT: Your muscles’ main functions are to keep your joints properly aligned (erect posture), AND to move your bones into flexion or extension (move you). For those purposes, muscles are directly attached to your bones – and always cross at least 1 joint in order to move parts of your skeleton around.

Think: Puppet strings.

FACT: Muscles can excessively shorten (become tight) through vigorous activity (e.g. how the pecs tighten after a bench press), OR through static positioning (e.g. hamstrings lose length from sitting too long, traps shorten from holding tension).

FACT: Muscles can also excessively lengthen through vigorous activity (e.g. running hurdles, swimming lengths) OR through static positioning (e.g. poor posture, awkward sleep positions).

I have written several posts in this blog about body posture, particularly “rounded shoulders, forward neck” syndrome.

The culprits in this type of DYSFUNCTIONAL POSTURE are the smart phone, cell phone, laptop, computer screen, car seat, soft couch, airplane seat, yada, yada, yada – ADLs (Activities of Daily Life) that put us into positions that accentuate a slouched upper back, shoulders rotated forward, protruding belly, chest caved in, neck poking ahead.

Think about it –  here you have the spine, the chest, the neck, the shoulders – all doing the same thing – muscles at the front (pecs, sternos, abs, front delts) passively being shortened - while muscles at the back (traps, rear delts, rhomboids) are passively being lengthened. And gravity really sucks when you’re off kilter.

That’s why, when I watch most people go through their ritual of  ”pre-exercise” stretching at the gym, I must say that RARELY DOES WHAT THEY’RE DOING MAKE SENSE!!

From this day forward I want you to stop and ask yourself  WHAT you’re stretching and WHY you’re stretching it.

Get personal with it:

Are you stretching a muscle that’s already spent half of its day in a stretched out position?

Are you stretching a muscle and lengthening it just before you’re about to ask it to lift a 55 pound dumbbell? (Think: stretching the heck out of a bungee cord, then expecting it to shorten and hold something tight.)

1) DON’T stretch what you don’t need to stretch: Muscles that are already stretched out. Muscles that are about to do their job.

2) DO stretch what you need to stretch: Muscles that have been in a shortened position all day. Muscles that have completed their job.

3) DON’T CONFUSE muscle “warm-up” with muscle “stretching“. They are distinctly different.

Does this guy really need to be doing...

... this rear-deltoid stretch? NO!

Your workouts should focus on making sure that you perform exercises that shorten & strengthen muscles where they need to be (for the guy on the left – upper shoulders, mid-back, rear deltoids) and leave stretching for muscles that need to be lengthened & strengthened (in this case, pectorals, abdominals, hip flexors, hamstrings.)

Do you have questions about anything you read or hear – either on this blog or elsewhere?

Write to me at > info@MyTrainerSays.com