Days off between stretching

[Knyght]

So I was looking up some general stretching stuff (I currently do AGT routine 3x per week, was thinking of doing it every day).

Anyway I found this: http://www.exrx.net/ExInfo/Stretching.html

Which says (at least implies) that you should rest 96 hours between stretching.

I decided to take that with a pinch of salt and hunt down the article it references. And bloody hell that was hard to find. Finally did though, here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... /#d32e3437

So I'm wondering what people think of this. Especially if anyone has access to the full text.

I only scanned the abstract but I'm already dubious. They selected people who weren't already on a stretching routine, which started ringing bells at me. Also if I'm reading this right the people who stretched daily had their final measurements after 6 days, while those in the 96 hour group's final measuring session must have been 24 days after they had started. I would be willing to make a smallish bet that if those people had stretched every day for 20 days then had a few days off they would be quite better off. I'd even make a small bet that even without any rest days they would still be better.

And that doesn't even mention the small sample size each group must have had with only 30 people across three groups :/

I'm also wondering what people here think about rest days between stretching in general. For example, AGT says stretch every day, exrx seems to say that once or twice a week is better.

Also are there any other good routines? AGT is awesome but it misses things like backbending, wrists (which are a weakness for me) and probably a whole lot of stuff I haven't even thought of.

[jl5555]

Cole must be sitting on a beach on Mallorca as he usually replies to these stretching posts. In a nutshell I might advise to do what you think feels best for you. I suspect doing the same stretching routine everyday will quickly become boring and as you say it doesn't hit all the areas you want. Why not do what you're doing 3 days a week and then devise another stretch routine to fill in the blanks for another 3 days and then take a day off to honor your weeks work?

[Cole Dano]

Nothing to be dubious about here (other than my location)

The abstract says in essence that the differences were noted when the subjects were cold, and after warm up the differences disappeared.

This is very common experience.

There are many viewpoints on the implications of this and similar, recovery issues. Kurtz for example says not to work with a sore muscle at all and wait until it's fully recovered.

There are other's that might prefer you to work very intensely and force quicker adaptation.

With regard to stretching, i'm a middle ground person. If you wait too long, i think the results will negate themselves.

Hamstrings particularly, seem to regress very quickly. However i certainly find that an adequate warm up and general leg and hip mobility work prior to the serious stretching are very beneficial and at my age rarely stretch into soreness anymore. I did however do this on a daily basis during my Ashtanga days.

I'm not able to say is it the residual effect of all that hard work that now makes getting deep hamstring work comparatively easy even though i don't do it on a daily basis now, or is it that mobility warm up itself.