When do you stretch?

steph81

When I was part of organized teams in school we would always stretch together before practice.  Now that I run alone or sometimes with a small group, we're in the habit of only stretching after our run.  Am I going to injure myself by not stretching beforehand?  Do you stretch before, after, or both?

GnomeSweetGnome

I generally think it's a bad idea to stretch cold muscles, so I usually just stretch during and after my runs,

shauni27

I suck and for the most part only stretch after (but I stretch after for a good 30 minutes most days).  If I feel tight/sore beforehand I might do a quick 2 minutes of stretches.

MayFlowers22

I usually stretch for a couple minutes before and then after.

jgleespen

After

rayofsunshine99

When I was a kid in school, we always stretched before exercise.  Now, they say that it's better to stretch after you're warmed up. 

Ideally, I would warm up (with a brisk walk or something) then stretch, then workout but I don't always have the time or opportunity for that, so I typically stretch after my workout, but sometimes, say if I arrive to a fitness class early or something, I'll stretch beforehand.  When I do, it's never affected me negatively. 

Once however, during a boot camp class when I had not stretched or warmed up yet, I pulled my hamstring pretty bad during a sprint.  So I still kinda feel like doing it before hand is better but I'm obviously not an expert, and the real experts prob know better than me 

robinsokj

You should never stretch before your muscles are warm

Mush-Tastic

I do a lot of dynamic stretching prior to my runs to get my muscles warmed up. To do full-on stretching before on cold muscles is actually a big cause of injuries. I save that for after.

beachbum1980

robinsokj:

You should never stretch before your muscles are warm

this. i read a lot about this a few months ago before i started my training program and talked to my fitness gurus and this was the general consensus. so if you want to stretch before, it is fine, as long as you warm up your muscles first, such as walk before you run, do jumping jacks, etc, then stretch. and you should always do it after since you are already warmed up.