Name: Stretching is KILLING Your Gains (BIG MISTAKE!)
Uploaded: 2017-12-13T13:58:20.000Z
Duration: 6 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today we're going to talk about why stretching is killing your gains.

To demonstrate it I want to start by having us all stand up and do a set of 15 degree

angle dorsiflexion, 130 degree knee flexion, and 110 degree hip flexion, lower lumbar/spine

stabilizing, scap retracting, forward eye gazes.

See, the thing is, that's just a squat, but your body doesn't store that information that

Your body recognizes a squat as a squat, and you learned it from a very young age.

An engram is a stored motor pattern that allows us to be neurologically efficient so when

I have to squat – let's say, when I have a muscle marker in my pocket that I drop,

I don’t think about going through every component that I just listed out for you.

But in order to get down there, yes, all that stuff is happening for me to go down here

But instead, instantly my body knows 'get down to the ground, pick that thing up, and

So what happens is, when you start to do static stretching, holding stretches for 30 seconds,

45 seconds – some people do them for a minute and a half – prior to either training, or

going out and competing in something, you're asking for trouble because what you're trying

to do is – in an effort to do a good thing you're causing your body to have to readapt

on the fly, and it doesn’t really do a great job of it.

So it compromises your ability to do this.

So if I were to do that before a squat, and I stretch all the things out – because guys

do everything, they'll stretch out their quads, they'll stretch out their hamstrings, they're

going to stretch out their hips before they do a squat, even upper body because they know

they've got to get their shoulders back in order to grab the bar.

They go through this whole process and when they step under the bar, the body knows a

squat based on what your ability to do that squat is on an everyday basis.

Now, with this temporary increase in length that I've caused by disrupting it through

my static stretching, now when I step under the bar, maybe even if I was stretching my

forearms out a little bit – because people do everything before they squat.

Now I go in and I grab, I can actually turn a back squat, or a high bar squat into more

of a low bar squat, just because I have more flexibility here through my forearms, at least

If I go into a squat there that's definitely going to disrupt my motor pattern.

If my hips are a little bit looser and I go down in the squat, when I go down a little

lower than I'm used to, while it's not a bad thing I'm just not used to that.

So now, my body is trying to say "Wait, is he squatting?

Is that in the engram that I have stored?

And it spends all this time trying to match up the differences between what it's experiencing

now, versus what you have stored, and neurologically you become inefficient.

The effort is being spent there, rather than maximizing your strength in performance here.

No, static stretching is a great thing because ultimately, it leads to increased muscle length

That's going to benefit you in the weight room, just not right now.

I'm going to tell you how you can do it if you demand, and insist on doing that, but

I'd rather give you a better way to do it.

Anyone that's played golf can experience the same thing.

If I were to go and swing, I have a golf swing.

That's what my body has stored; this golf swing.

But if I spend all my time static stretching before I go play golf, when I step up to the

first tee – you've probably experienced this yourself if you've played any length

of time – all of a sudden the back side of my shoulders here are a lot more loose

So instead of getting to here before I initiate the up part o my swing here, now I'm able

But that changes what's demanding here at my hip, in order to stabilize the swing.

So everything is thrown off and I spend the first four holes trying to recapture my ability

to match up what it is I'm trying to do, with what my body knows is a golf swing.

And if I'm competing in golf, that's more than enough to screw up your whole round.

If I have a bench-press and I've spent all my time static stretching out my chest – and

I've shown you guys some really good static stretches to differentiate between pec minor,

Just not to be done now, before I get to here, and do a set of bench-press because now with

this increased flexibility I wind up drifting.

My arms aren't in the same stored motor pattern.

I can't be as neurologically efficient here, and then focus my effort on power and strength

development – which are both neurologically driven.

Instead, I'm trying to find, and match up that stored pattern.

Even just a little bit of variance here can change things.

When we static stretch, guys, we're temporarily causing a length tension relationship, and

a difference of the cross-bridging of the actin and myosin that help to create a contraction.

So even if it's just a little bit lengthened, versus the normal, we're trying to reestablish

So what would you do if you insisted on doing static stretching before your training?

Well, you'd better spend some time reestablishing what's normal.

What I mean by that is, you go through, before you start your training, you've got to go

through and start to do all, I believe, reintegration of these motor patterns by doing these exercises

Two, or three sets of each one, exploring the new range of motion that you've been gaining

through your static stretching with lighter weights.

That could take an extra 15, or 20 minutes.

But I believe it's necessary if your goal for that day is to do anything where we're

So the alternative is to spend your time, instead, doing a quick warmup, and then doing

an active warmup using dynamic stretching activities to get yourself ready.