Bike Forums - Stretching and resting

Quote:

Originally Posted by slickrcbd (Post 22067831)

Ah, so just trial and error. Also apparently it can change, as when I was younger I never needed to stretch and never saw the point of all those stretches at the start and usually end of gym class. It was only when I got older that I started having problems if I skipped the stretching. I just dread what will happen when I turn 60 if I had so much bad stuff when I turned 30.

I can say something else, a few years back I pulled a muscle lifting some heavy boxes at work during an upgrade when we in IT had to bring a ton (actually it was probably two tons) of computers, monitors, and equipment from a receiving area to the IT department and process it. The Orthopedist asked me if I'd stretched before doing what was essentially weight lifting. I said no, and he tsked at me and said I wasn't 18 anymore, and that I needed to stretch before lifting more than about 30-40lbs or I risk that happening. He also recommended stretching before moving a lot of boxes even if they only weigh 10-20lbs if I'm going to be moving a lot of them.
This was years AFTER I discovered I needed to stretch on the bike. '
Then years later I pulled a muscle again, this time I was working a part-time survival job at Sam's Club in the electronic department while looking for a permanent full-time job. I was asked by a customer to put two 40-packs of 500ml bottles from a nearby endcap on her cart for her. That's 44lbs of water plus the weight of 40 16.9oz bottles and packaging, somewhere between 45 and 50lbs. I picked up both at once and put them in the cart, and somehow pulled a muscle. I went to the same orthopedist who said "Didn't I tell you about the importance of stretching the last time this happened? Maybe you will learn this time." I did, and now I'm a bit paranoid about doing the few simple stretches the doctor went over with me before lifting anything heavy. So I guess stretching is now necessary for me, but it didn't used to be before I turned 30. I should mention that what the doctor told me to do before lifting heavy stuff and what my high school gym teacher made me do before using the free weights however is very different, with the gym teacher's taking far longer and being far more comprehensive, while the doctors' were just a few simple stretches.

This is sort of a complicated topic, I've spent years working to fix an injury I got trying to get in better shape, what I'm sayings comes from that.

There's a lot of things to the condition your muscular system is in - muscle tissue quality, muscle length (determined by the brain), opposing muscles activating and moving against each other correctly, nerves that go to the muscles being active and not restricted/pinched, etc. The muscular system is a whole machine.

For a few lucky people everything continues working great into old age and they never notice any benefits of warming up, movement, etc.
For the average person things are a little suboptimal to begin with and slowly degrade as you get older. Moving yourself through the range of motions helps keep your muscles in better shape but there's a lot of variables in how this goes.
For a few unlucky people something is pretty off to begin with and they're hit with the effects of muscle aging much sooner than others, or they get injured and something gets "stuck" and that starts them down the road to physical disfunction way sooner.

It's pretty average to hit 30 and find that you suddenly notice the benefits of stretching but it's a bit concerning you need to stretch as often as you describe just to ride 3-4 miles. There is reason to be concerned about what will happen to you at 60.

Unfortunately the state of fixing these things is not great....medicine seems to have given up on having doctors that specialize in muscles, there's actually a fair amount of good research on what goes wrong - but not a lot of good research on how to diagnose it and fix it. I think if they every came up with a machine that could read muscle activation in real time with no radiation we might suddenly see effective treatments by a doctors.

You'd probably see some benefit if you started foam rolling rather than just stretching. But for my issues I've only made real progress on them with metal muscle working tools and studying anatomy charts, and even then it's been "progress" not "fixed" and has the risk of causing more issues than it solves.

I know my issues have their root at something called "twisted hip" - muscles on one side of the hip get weak or inactive while muscles on the other side get stronger and shorter - over time it twists things around so much it was starting to affect things you wouldn't think it would like vision, being able to stand (I could walk forward fine but not stand in one place without massive discomfort), etc.