Hi again stretchers! Well, I had to take a little time away from stretching for high kicks. I never felt I got the form right with my dynamic stretches, lost the motivation to get up half an hour earlier and, to be honest, reached a big plateu after a little and didn't want to carry on. Moreso, I did my hip in. Whatever I did to it stopped me running on it and crunches became HARD to do whenever I worked out, and I am certain it was down to horrid horrid form in the dynamic stretches. Okay, confession over and onto brighter things - hip's totally better now and I can run around/do handsprings/do crunches all day with no bother, and I REALLY want to get cracking again. I am SURE I'll do myself in though with bad form. I have looked at every sequence of pictures out there in the world, seen every blog, read every hint and tip my Google-fu will conjoure, but I don't want to get it wrong a second time... Are there ANY videos out there ANYONE has seen, or would be willing to make even, that will show me good form for the following three performed as dynamic stretches? (Image taken from here btw) I'm just not able to interpret or learn this properly from it being written down or from pictures and I'll ninjure myself up again trying. If anyone's got a bone to throw me I'll be super-grateful, and you'll help me make the most of something I've been DYING to improve on. HUGE thanks for reading folks.
You don't actually need to do them anymore... http://danvanzandt.blogspot.com/2010/06/enter-heretic.html
Next Great, I just thought I figured out a pretty good routine but now this. In my last thread I asked about my sequence and DVZ got that straightened out. I'm confused still. Should we not warm up prior to our main workouts? I would think some dynamic forms of movement would be good to get the muscles warmed up. I still plan to do isos after the main part be it cardio or strength. I had kept static for after the isos also. The statics cover a wider range of body parts I thought, or can isos also cover other areas besides splits?
I'm so happy! Thanks Mr Van Zandt! And cool for straightening that all out (no pun intended.) Okays, isometric stretching routine coming up. Cheers for the swift reply.
In my opinion, you're better off with a thorough warm up then without. Dan believes that a warm up isn't necessary IF you train to train without one, and that's most likely true; however, most of us are used to training with warm ups and I think it would unwise to change abruptly. A few minutes of foam rolling problematic areas/tight muscles, a few short mobility drills, and then depending on the workout you can do warm up sets or start increasing intensity. Personally, I feel great after DeFranco's Agile 8 or his lower body warm up. They're short, and they don't wear you out before the actual work starts! If you read Thomas Kurz's book "The Science of Sports Training," you'll notice that although in the whole it's a very well researched and written book, it makes it quite clear that Kurz is slightly addicted to endurance training! His warm ups are 20-30 minutes minimum and involve a HUGE amount of work. Skipping, running, jogging, jumping, 800m, 300m, 600m, 250 dynamic leg raises, 200 squats, 1-200 sit ups, etc! That's not what warm ups should be like. They should be short, effective, and energizing.
