I recently received an e-mail from Marc Dagenais as part the softball performance tips he gives out in his free newsletter. This one was about dynamic stretching.
Now, I know this coach, it’s not surprising coming from him. He’s very opinionated, close-minded, believes he’s always right and when he’s not happy with how things are going, he yells and gets mad.
Just as a curiosity, I asked him: “Why do you believe that dynamic warm-ups is just a bunch of B.S.?”
He answered that he’s been using static stretching for 25 years for himself and with all the teams he’s coached and he never had any problems.
I replied: “So, if my 83-year old grandma has been a smoker all her life and is still healthy today, I must assume that smoking is good for me right?” (interesting perspective huh?)
You should have seen the look on his face. I think he got my point and didn’t really know what to reply to this twisted logic. He mumbled something and left.
My point is this: we are creature of habits and habits are hard to change.
We are comfortable with routines and we hate change.
Trying to come up with a new way to warm-up is not always easy.
Athletes will say: “I don’t feel like I’ve stretched”.
The purpose of a warm-up is not to feel like you’ve stretched (which you get with static stretching), it’s to make the muscle ready to perform and prevent injuries.
They muscles must be warmed, have adequate range of motion, and be ready to fire. Dynamic warm-ups accomplish that.
Some coaches will say: “I’ve used your stuff and I have an athlete that blew her knee out. Your stuff doesn’t work.”
First, it’s not my stuff. It’s just what almost every elite strength and conditioning coach and athletes now used to prepare themselves and while it helps decrease injuries, there will always be injuries in sports!
Bottom line, just because you’ve been doing something fora long time without problem doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way of doing it.
Watch out for Thursday, I’ll release my brand new Dynamic Warm-Up for Softball System.
You don’t want to miss that.”
- What exercises should your players be doing instead of the good old static stretch?
- What order should these exercises be done in for optimal effectiveness?
We’ve been using dynamic stretching with our team for a couple of years now — ever since I saw another article Marc wrote. I think it’s really helped. Maybe it’s just luck, but we’ve been injury-free in that time, and it seems like our players are a little quicker during the games, especially at the start.
Interestingly, the idea of dynamic stretching was introduced by an old guy coach (me). The players, all youngsters of course, at first were resistant. They were worried they’d look stupid, or they were afraid of change. That’s kind of the opposite of what you’d expect. You’d think young people would be more open to change, and old coaches would resist. No matter. We do it and it works. Can’t wait to see Marc’s DVD to find out if we’re doing it right!