I've always loved lifting weights and I stil ldo, but only until recently did I realize that I wasn't doing my body as much good as I thought.

I hate to preach, but I thought I'd just mention this to anyone else interested in working out. About two years ago I started noticing a pinching sensation in my right shoulder/trap are when I would do shrugs, but it was immediately stop after the exercise and no harm no foul.

Well that went on for the last two years (I just avoided shrugs) but then about 6 months ago I was working my shoulders out and I started getting horrible pains on my upper right back up to my neck, especially when I would turn my neck to really an position.

I went to get a massage from this guy and he helped me put some insight on my exercise regime and stressed one thing I've never done, even when I ran cross country I never did it.

For the love of god folks make sure you stretch before and after work outs. I can't beging to explain how frustrated I am with my back pains and how I can't go to the gym right now, it's been over 6 weeks of me barely doing any exercise and I can still feel the strain when I nod my head back and to the left.

Apparently my hips were out of place, and my muscles all along my ribs and back were shifted out of place.

So I guess my advice is despite stretching feeling extremely queer to do and exteremyl pointless, I guess there are some positives.

I was watching a TLC show about that kid Hercules and his flexibility amazed me, so I guess my next era in my exercises is going to be centered around doing some stretches everyday....we'll see how long this actually lasts, but that's my plan as of now.

Stretching before working out has never been shown to actually prevent injury. It is important to warm your muscles up before working them out, crucial, but stretching is not only not beneficial, but detrimental to explosive lifts. It's important to stretch, yeah, but not before working out.

I was going to say this. It's actually better to stretch AFTER the workout.

This.


And that's only if you care about being flexible.

Well overall being more flexible will help with less muscle pulls, etc.

How does stretching after working out help?

Stretching is good for one thing: Improving flexibility. It will help improve flexibility no matter when you do it. However, it does not, as some people would like you to believe, lower the chance of injury and may in fact, raise it.

Why? Isn't working out contracting then stretching the muscle?

Technically, I guess, yes, but it's not the same as stretching for flexibility.

All of your skeletal muscles have a point at which they will not let you voluntary extend past. There's some fancy name for it which I've forgotten but anyway, it's to prevent you from damaging that muscle. By slowly stretching the muscle near/to/past(I can't remember which) that point, the muscle learns that it safe to go that far and the point extends a little more.

When I do bicep curls, it hurts my right elbow... bone. From my elbow to my wrist, but more towards the elbow.

You might want to see a doctor about that. If I were you, I'd try lifting lighter weights, and definitely make sure to do a warmup set or two at at most 40% of the weight you plan to do for your full lift.

I meant more of a post workout stretch, because think about all the strain you're doing to your body, a good stretch afterwards kind of relaxes muscles and realigns shit I guess.

It's mostly just when I try to lift the most I can do on a bicep curl... and I just took a break from the exercise for a while and lift like 10 lbs less than before and worked my way up slower... feels a lot better than before. I can't remember the last time it acted up. Sucks though, I was excited to see how much weight I'd be able to lift.