There is a widespread misconception of when and why to stretch our muscles.

Many clients told me that they do not stretch their muscle before running because they think It could be dangerous to stretch “cold muscles”.

This is a big misconception of the Stretching for many reasons:

1. Running is a more stressful exercise than stretching.
2. Running overloads immediately tendons, muscles, joints.
3. Running stresses immediately the Golgi Tendon Organ ( GTO ) that is a proprioceptive sensory organ that senses changes in the muscle tension.

Instead I strongly advise to stretch before and after running or whatever kind of workout for many reasons:

1. Stretching is useful to warm your muscle up.
2. Stretching is useful to increase the local blood perfusion.
3. Stretching at the beginning of the activity produce a mild and less stressful activation of the GTO and Stretch Receptors of the musculoskeletal system.
4. Stretching does not produce excessive stress on muscles, joints, tendons.
5. Stretching increase the flexibility of your muscles and related joints.
6. Stretching improve the range of motion of your joints.

I consider the Stretching e real workout of your muscles flexibility and It has the same importance as your Muscle Power.

The balance between Muscle Power and Muscle Flexibility is a key point for a higher sports performance and the well-being of your body.

Even if you have good muscle power but poor muscle flexibility, you can get a lot of injuries such as muscle strain, muscle sprain, muscle tear, etc.

For Stretching is very important the correct posture of each exercise and one of the easiest solutions is to get a good Visual Stretching Guide.

By improving your muscle flexibility you are going to get many benefits:

• Higher sports performance.
• Fewer chances of muscle injuries.
• More range of motion of the joints.
• Higher mobility of the entire body.