Matthew Fogle
NASM CPT FNS BCS SFC
Many workout routines and personal trainers will recommend stretching and/or foam rolling – both before and after workouts – as implementations for better health. “1 Workout 4 Life” does as well.
The issue you might run into, however, is that once you implement these activities AND add your warm-up/cool down routines, your 45-minute workout all of a sudden becomes 1 hour and 15 minutes (or more!).
So be sure not to overthink this. You don’t have to do a lot of everything to see the benefits…
Benefits of stretching and/or foam rolling:
Increases joint range of motion
Decreases the excessive tension of muscles
Relieves joint stress
Improves muscle coordination
Improves muscle function
_______
If you are short on time, do reverse calculations and do your best to implement these activities. For example, if you have an hour to be in the gym, at least 5 minutes will be the part of “being human” (hanging your coat up / filling up the water bottle / saying howdy to the person behind the desk).
That gives you 10 minutes to split your warm-up/stretching and cool-down/stretching routines. That’s not much time, still go for it. Five minutes for warm-up/stretching and five minutes for cool-down/stretching can be the difference between a great workout versus a bad one.
[Check out the 1W4L Lifestyle article on warming up & cooling down]
With that being said, it is optimal to implement a bit more stretching and/or foam rolling. So if you have the time, perform 5-10 minutes of dynamic/ballistic stretching (holding the stretched position for about 2 seconds at a time) before your warm-up; and 10-20 minutes of static stretching (holding the stretch position for 30 seconds) and foam rolling after your cool-down.
Additionally, if you have a 15-minute window of time before bed, you can also stretch and foam roll at that time to see benefits. Doing these activities before bed can soothe overactive muscles and can potentially help you sleep better.
To your best health,
~ Matthew