Warming Up vs Stretching

David doing some box jumps

I am always amazed at the number of people that still stretch before they workout. I think that youth league and high school sports teams are some of the worst culprits when it comes to poor warm up routines. There is a difference between warming up and stretching. Before you perform activity you need to warm up. The goal of a warm up should be to elevate your core temperature and activate your nervous system. This is not accomplished through traditional stretching. At Foley Performance, we use what is called a dynamic warm up. The goal of the dynamic warm up is to actively move the body through complete ranges of motion. When you finish your warm up you should be sweating or close to it. Traditional stretching programs when done as a warm up do not provide this benefit and they have actually been shown to increase your chances of pulling a muscle. Traditional stretching programs done as a warm up have also been shown to reduce your power output. For these reasons I am always amazed when I go watch a high school sporting event and they are static stretching before the game. If you want to stretch do it after your workout.

Workout of the Day

100 burpees for time