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By Paul Rogers, About.com Guide to Weight Training

Stretching the Truth - Does Stretching Work?

Tuesday November 6, 2007

Take a survey of a group of exercisers or a conference of sports coaches and ask them if they recommend stretching before or after their workout or game. Most will say "yes" because that's been the pervading recommendation in the sports sciences for as long as I can remember -- and, as luck has it, that's quite a few decades.

woman stretching

The problem is that as more controlled trials assess the value of stretching around the time of exercise -- before or after -- the more it seems that stretching has little value. Surprised? So is just about everyone that looks at the results.

Yet, not all is lost. Stretching on a daily or at least regular basis may have more value -- and warm-ups, as distinguished from stretching alone, are still useful.

Catch up on the latest information on stretching and warm-ups in this article:

---> Stretches and Warm-Ups for Weight Training

Image: George Doyle/Getty Images

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