Originally Posted by
urbanknight
OP: Unless one of those steep climbs are in the first 5 miles of the ride, just use the first few miles as your warm up. When I was racing, they used to say "the longer the race, the shorter the warm up", and it worked.
It's somewhat recent, meaning within the last 10 years (which I consider recent because these types of things take decades to get to the general public). My brother-in-law learned while studying kinesiology that stretching before exercise doesn't do anything and can actually lead to injuries. It is, however, a very good idea to stretch immediately AFTER exercise. This will keep you limber all the time, including the next time you work out.
Originally Posted by
gregf83
Although I find the data in the link to be a bit dubious, it appears they did not do a real "study" but only searched keywords in relation to stretching and muscle injury, and other articles. In these clinical article reviews I am sure there was a lot of information, but it seems to me that in order to prove a hypothesis of this nature there should be a study done with a wide spectrum of volunteers performing various activities with and without stretching. Then the results of the study can be reviewed for it's individual merit, and not just what was found in a keyword search.
This does not mean I don't believe it, and will certainly be looking more into this. I did note that "articles that suggested streching was beneficial included...warm-up"
I would most certainly agree that the people responsible for this article are much more studied than myself, so I would agree with the assessment that in order to effectively stretch there needs to be some manner of warm up first.
Thanks much for the informative posts.