How much flexibility and mobility work were you doing?
Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat (2015)
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If so, that certainly makes it a no-brainer, and it concurs with the conclusion reached by Ralph Carpinelli et al.
Robert Otto was my professor lol. Pretty sure they worked together.
Indeed. He is one of the authors of the meta study I referred to earlier.
Tried a fair amount of all that - didn't seem to make a difference and there are schools of thought that 'stretching' is essentially useless and can be damaging performed hot or cold.
I certainly don't agree with that. Trying to run when you're super tight is far more damaging then stretching, even cold. As far as mobility moreso than a static stretch does wonders for me. Doing a back squat with the inability to properly externally rotate the leg at the hip joint will destroy your knees. Getting on a foam roller/using other methods to smash up you're glutes and Psoas can greatly help restore proper joint function. Do you still have any types of pain? Sorry if this is getting off topic.
Dr. Otto was a really smart guy. Very dogmatic with the whole one set to failure thing though which I didn't really care for. Many of his responses in class to questions regarding one set to failure/shouldn't you do more were, "what's the point?"
Well I wouldn't try and run fast when cold or tight, I would simply warm the body up very slowly and increase tempo. You will see lots of rugby teams warming up before games (especially 7's) with zero static stretching but rather jogging back and forth, then adding jumps, bends forward while jogging, etc. eventually increasing the pace to a sprint for short distances.
40 years old here and no real pain. Odd pain in areas where bones were broken and one of my knee caps at the top is starting to tingle a little which is concerning. Overall not real pain to complain about; however, I know if I sprinted at some point something would pull, could be within 2 minutes, could be 10 sessions later, but at some point more than likely a hamstring will go. Last time one went it was pretty bad with severe black and blue which eventually drained all the way down to my ankle as gravity took the blood a couple weeks into it healing.
Glad to hear you're pretty much pain free and also that you understand your limitations. In regards to stretching I don't necessarily statically stretch pre workout that would be more post workout if I had a goal of increasing my flexibility. Preworkout would be more of the foam rolling type stuff, although there is some static stretching that I do preworkout mainly for my hip flexors. You can get as warm as you want but if there's an issue with how the muscle is pulling on the joints bc of tightness or spasms etc you will still be more prone to injury regardless of body temp. Personally, I do 15-20 mins of mobility work before I start training. Then I run, then I lift. Yes it all almost seems backwards but I have my reasons for such order. Mobility first as a primer to the movements I will be doing that day and to sort of get me "in the zone/decompress" from work or whatever else I was doing. Then I run bc if I don't do it earlier in the session I prob won't do it lol. Then lifting last because I'm not looking to compete anymore/trying to get huge so running first forces me not to go super heavy since I have some joint issues also. Funny part is my body has never looked better which goes back to my "it all works" statement. Progress matters. My 2mile time has decreased and my weights and reps have all gone up in the framework of my training template so what's the difference?
Well, apparently, that was the conclusion of their study or studies. If he had confidence in what the studies showed, how else should he have responded?
For my part, I began reducing volume significantly about 3.5 years ago when I first came across these studies, having been prompted by the predecessor to this thread on ET. I only very recently settled on 1 set per exercise, and even that was short-lived, despite my recent assurances that I was going to stick with it for a time. My compromise is one set to failure followed by about 10 to 20 seconds rest and then a few more reps to failure again. So it's not quite 2 full sets, but it's more than one. I take a 2- or 3-minute break between different exercises. Twice a week. With any luck I'll stick with this volume for a time...
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