Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #2 - Dynamic vs Static Stretching

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Happy Wednesday everybody! And good morning to you. My name is Joe King, and this is your second episode of your Weekly Cup of Joe. Thanks for joining us. I hope you enjoyed last week's segment. This week's segment is going to be questions from Kay, one of our former clients who has asked about dynamic stretching versus static stretching; which one's better. "Do you do longer hold times and more reps? " Well, okay. That's a great question. And I probably need more than 30 minutes to answer it, but I'll do the best I can in three minutes, so here we go.

So typically dynamic stretching is done before you exercise, or before you go out and do an activity, say such as gardening, it’s done to loosen up the muscles and to get the blood flowing and, try to get things going and just basically loosen the joints up as much as you possibly can. Most of the time you're going to do anywhere from ten to fifteen repetitions. And the goal is, like I said, to warm things up, loosen the muscles up, and get the blood flowing. So for a dynamic stretch, you can do a basic lunge. So you can just step in and you can hold on. That's totally fine. Step, lunge forward. As I said, you'll do about ten to fifteen repetitions on either side, you could advance this to make it a little bit more, to get a little more muscle tissue. You could actually do a step-up lunge onto your steps, like your bottom stairs, so it's a six-inch step up here, you can just do a step lunge. You can squat down a little more, make it a little more dynamic, get a few more muscles involved, so that kind of work. You can do a sideways lunge; it opens the hips up a little bit more. And of course, we go to both sides. I'm just going to one side so we can see them here. Also for golfers or for yard work stuff, it's not raking, owing, it's just doing some trunk rotation going nice and easy side to side. You don't have to go fast; you don't have to go hard. Good technique, slow and control the side; ten to fifteen repetitions.

So Static Stretching though on other hand is done typically after you exercise or after the activity and for static stretching, it's good to do it because the blood is already there, the muscles are already warmed up; it's very loose and now you can physiologically lengthen and try to stretch out those tight muscles. So we hold those stretches for approximately 30 seconds and you'll do it three to four times on each leg. So one of the stretches that you can do, is static stretches, sit on a chair, sit anywhere you want to put your leg out in front of you, sit up in good posture and lean forward and stretch out those tight hamstrings that most people have. We're not trying to touch our toes, just a good posture, going forward, deep breathing, relaxing, no pain. And we do both legs three to four times for about 30 seconds. Another good stretch that we can do is, we can do a Calf Stretch and most people have done this before. You lean up against the counter or the wall or something like that. Your back leg is out extended, your heels down, flat; knees and hips feet are facing forward and we can just do a nice static stretch like that. Great!

Another stretch that we can do is that we can just grab the back of your leg or actually the ankle I should say, and pull your knee up to your heel up to your butt, and do a little stretch for the front part of your thigh; your quad there. If that one doesn't work so well for you because you just can't grab it, you can lay on your stomach and you can use a strap or towel and grab the ankle and pull back. Or you can even use your opposite leg to pull the other one up. And one other stretch that you can do in this position is you can do just that same lunge that we did ahead of time, you can just hold that position; good upright posture. You can even think about tightening the butt cheek; the leg that is back, and the heel can be up off the ground. So that will also stretch the front part of your hip and your thigh as well. So those are all good stretches to do. There are lots of them out there, but as I said, the no pain, no gain theory, doesn't work and we want to beep breath, we want to relax and we want to have no pain when we are stretching at all.

So, I hope I answered your question okay. For the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about going BIG--Beginning In Gratitude. This week's focus is going to be its progress, not perfection. So anything we're starting to do, all these new habits we're starting to make, we can't do it a hundred percent all the time every day. So if you weren't doing any stretching before and now you're starting to stretch on a daily basis or try to start on a daily basis or even on every other day basis. So if you're stretching out three or four times a week, where before you weren't stretching it at all, that's a lot of progress for you. So maybe five or six days a week is the goal, but for right now it's progress, not perfection. You got to be happy with it, and celebrate the wins that you're stretching three to four times a week before you weren't stretching anything. But maybe you want to get to six or seven times a week, so just think about that.  So don't forget to send in your health, wellness or PT-related questions to j.king@ptadvantagepc.com and we'll see you, next time for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Thanks. Bye.