Knowing how and when to stretch properly is just as important for preventing injury as well as improving performance.
Let me start with a question. Say you have a bag of rubber bands in the refrigerator for safe keeping. Would you take one of the bands and stretch it to its maximum straight out of the cold refrigerator? What do you think might happen? Will it develop some micro tears, maybe tear completely? Not of much use now is it? So, if you wouldn’t want to do this with a rubber band, you probably wouldn’t want to do this with your un-warmed-up muscles either.
