Stretching, Tight muscles and Performance impact

MishMash95

So I've oddly just come to notice that most of my leg muscles are overly tight. While they have felt poor before, i've always just clocked it up to them being fatigued, but finding that after a rest week, they were still feeling rather laboured, I decided to investigate more.

Long story short, have been doing some stretches + foam rolling and now as you can imagine, my legs feel far more nimble, but what I wanted to know is if there have been any studies or documented experience of how actual leg muscle tightness affects performance? My intuition would say it should, but then again, I don't know if its the case that they naturally loosen up during a warm-up on the bike to the point where it wouldn't really make a difference. I had stretched in the past, but never all that consistently, but now i'm considering making it a full part of my recovery routine. My hesitation in the past is that I read about static stretching potentially causing muscle damage/injury. (Note I do always have a decent length warmup/cooldown for each ride).

My motivation for asking is i'm just hunting for all the different ways that I can optimise my recovery and thus get fitter faster by being able to train more consistently.

Cheers!

Bottom briquettes

Foam rollers and sports massages help with relieving muscle tightness, post ride. If you stretch and warm up before the ride, you’ll stop the period, in the first few minutes of the ride, when you’re most likely to injure yourself, if you go out ‘cold’ and go out too fast, too soon. The biggest issue most people find, if they don’t build in a ‘warm down’ / post ride foam roller / massage, is that the lactate that’s built up in the muscles, isn’t oxidised, and they end up with ‘Haribo legs’. If you can get access to a hyperbaric chamber / oxygen tent, that’s great for speeding up recovery too.

cooldad

Bottom briquettes wrote:

Foam rollers and sports massages help with relieving muscle tightness, post ride. If you stretch and warm up before the ride, you’ll stop the period, in the first few minutes of the ride, when you’re most likely to injure yourself, if you go out ‘cold’ and go out too fast, too soon. The biggest issue most people find, if they don’t build in a ‘warm down’ / post ride foam roller / massage, is that the lactate that’s built up in the muscles, isn’t oxidised, and they end up with ‘Haribo legs’. If you can get access to a hyperbaric chamber / oxygen tent, that’s great for speeding up recovery too.

WTF?

Although you can see he's an idiot - Haribo legs.

imposter2.0

cooldad wrote:

Bottom briquettes wrote:

Foam rollers and sports massages help with relieving muscle tightness, post ride. If you stretch and warm up before the ride, you’ll stop the period, in the first few minutes of the ride, when you’re most likely to injure yourself, if you go out ‘cold’ and go out too fast, too soon. The biggest issue most people find, if they don’t build in a ‘warm down’ / post ride foam roller / massage, is that the lactate that’s built up in the muscles, isn’t oxidised, and they end up with ‘Haribo legs’. If you can get access to a hyperbaric chamber / oxygen tent, that’s great for speeding up recovery too.

WTF?

Surely everyone has one of these in their back garden? Fair play to Milemuncher - the usernames may change, but the same old bollox keeps appearing. Also, contrary to what Milemuncher says above, stretching cold muscles is a really bad idea...

cougie

Has anyone ever injured themselves on a bike in the first few minutes ???

I've never heard of anyone pulling a muscle or similar.

shirley_basso

Not lasting but sometimes a niggle may appear at the start of a ride so I take it easy then it goes away once I'm warmed up

zeee

Tight muscle fibres won't fire efficiently. If your main muscles (glutes, quads) are tight then your body will bring in the weaker muscles to compensate. Stretching also helps increase blood flow and therefore aids recovery.

Try to avoid deep tissue massage or heavy foam rolling 48 hrs before or after high intensity exercise as your muscles are traumered and the last thing they need is being hammered whilst they are repairing. Light stretching/rolling after is good then you can increase the intensity of strecthing/rolling after a few days.

zeee

Also to add. I used to sprint (track and field) and never heard of people getting injured from static stretching. Admittedly dynamic stretching is better but you need to static stretch first as dynamically stretching a tight/rested muscle is definitely a good way to cause injury.

mamil314

I've not come across anything indicating that scientists know what massage does. It would seem people feel better/relieved and have 'fresher legs' next day, but there is no evidence this results in improved performance.

Bottom briquettes

cooldad wrote:

Bottom briquettes wrote:

Foam rollers and sports massages help with relieving muscle tightness, post ride. If you stretch and warm up before the ride, you’ll stop the period, in the first few minutes of the ride, when you’re most likely to injure yourself, if you go out ‘cold’ and go out too fast, too soon. The biggest issue most people find, if they don’t build in a ‘warm down’ / post ride foam roller / massage, is that the lactate that’s built up in the muscles, isn’t oxidised, and they end up with ‘Haribo legs’. If you can get access to a hyperbaric chamber / oxygen tent, that’s great for speeding up recovery too.

WTF?

Although you can see he's an idiot - Haribo legs.

Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it.

Bottom briquettes

cougie wrote:

Has anyone ever injured themselves on a bike in the first few minutes ???

I've never heard of anyone pulling a muscle or similar.

I’ve gone out hard when I’ve not warmed up, and it’s been cold and ‘orrible, and torn a hamstring. The physio asked the question about warming up before hand, then did the sharp intake of breath / roll eyes thing.

Bottom briquettes

Imposter wrote:

cooldad wrote:

Bottom briquettes wrote:

Foam rollers and sports massages help with relieving muscle tightness, post ride. If you stretch and warm up before the ride, you’ll stop the period, in the first few minutes of the ride, when you’re most likely to injure yourself, if you go out ‘cold’ and go out too fast, too soon. The biggest issue most people find, if they don’t build in a ‘warm down’ / post ride foam roller / massage, is that the lactate that’s built up in the muscles, isn’t oxidised, and they end up with ‘Haribo legs’. If you can get access to a hyperbaric chamber / oxygen tent, that’s great for speeding up recovery too.

WTF?

Surely everyone has one of these in their back garden? Fair play to Milemuncher - the usernames may change, but the same old bollox keeps appearing. Also, contrary to what Milemuncher says above, stretching cold muscles is a really bad idea...

That’ll be why none of the pro teams warm up on turbos and stretch before a stage then, ohh hang on......... and why would you ( increasingly ) be offered a proper sports massage after a long ride ( Sportive or otherwise) oh yeah, because it helps prevent the ‘John Wayne walk of shame’ is why. Unless you know otherwise of course........

imposter2.0

Bottom briquettes wrote:

That’ll be why none of the pro teams warm up on turbos and stretch before a stage then, ohh hang on......... and why would you ( increasingly ) be offered a proper sports massage after a long ride ( Sportive or otherwise) oh yeah, because it helps prevent the ‘John Wayne walk of shame’ is why. Unless you know otherwise of course........

Warming up on rollers or a turbo is not the same as stretching a cold muscle, Nick. I'm surprised you don't understand the difference. Oh hang on...no I'm not....

webboo

Bottom briquettes wrote:

cougie wrote:

Has anyone ever injured themselves on a bike in the first few minutes ???

I've never heard of anyone pulling a muscle or similar.

I’ve gone out hard when I’ve not warmed up, and it’s been cold and ‘orrible, and torn a hamstring. The physio asked the question about warming up before hand, then did the sharp intake of breath / roll eyes thing.

Maybe if you weren’t peddling 53x11 at 30 revs a minute from the word go. This might not have happened.

MishMash95

Cheers for the replies, bit of conflict in opinions, but i'll defo be sure to hop in the hyperbaric chamber post ride more often!

On a serious note, my main take away here is to do a gradual active warmup, and then stretch after a cooldown, which is similar to what I was doing already, though will be sure to try and stretch more often. I can already see that if I feel good, i tend not to stretch, but this could just lead up to a big build up of tension over time. I'll perhaps find a middle ground and not stretch after intense workouts, but as someone suggested, wait a day or two, perhaps saving stretching until after the rest day, or after endurance rides which are less taxing on the muscle fibres themselves.

DeVlaeminck

I think you have it right, stretch post exercise but not deep stretching after particularly intense or long rides when you may have more muscle damage.