Muscle loss

[tim hutzley]

Does anyone know what the percentage is for muscle loss if you dont stretch after lifting? and any other good weight lifting things like that that I should know.

[jhesch]

hmm.... ive never heard anything about muscle loss because of lack of stretching but just more potential for injury. same with coooling down after hard aerobic execise. aer you sure that there is muscle loss? only other pertinent fact i can think of relating to weight lifting is just proper nutrition so your muscles can recover as well as being hydrated....other than that....?

[mcminkz05]

i didnt know you lost muscle if you dunt stretch after lifting... whered you hear that?

[tim hutzley]

I was at the mt sac camp and one of the guys there said that if you dont stretch after you lift you lose some muscle that you just gained. The way he sounded he didnt sound completely sure of himself, he said that another guy there knew the statistics about it.

[achtungpv]

I've always been under the impression that muscle is built during recovery not during the actual lifting. Maybe how you recover from lifting could have an effect? They could have meant that you won't see the same muscle gain if you don't properly recover from lifting...not necessarily the same as losing muscle. I dunno.

[dbulick]

I seriously doubt that you lose any muscle mass or strength if you don't stretch after lifting.

[mcminkz05]

yeah, you dont gain muscle while lifting, you just break up muscle fibers... and those are rebuilt and more added when your recovering, which is what builds muscle. i dont see how stretching right after lifting has any effect at all on that. It mgiht help recovery a bit, but i dont think not stretching will make you lsoe anything, which you havnt even gained yet in the first place..

[Robert schmitt]

I don't know if this is what he was refering to but you can shorten or lengthen a muscle by not lifting correctly/stretching. The following quote is from The Textbook of medical physiology ninth ed. Guyton & Hall; Unit II; Membrane Physiology, Nerve, and Muscle; page 84. "Muscle hypertrophy and muscle atrophy"

"Adjustment of muscle length. Another type of hypertrophy occurs when muscles are stretched to a greater than normal length. This causes new sacromeres to be added at the ends of the muscle fibers where they attach to the tendons. In fact, new sacromeres can be added as rapidly as several per minute, illistrating the rapidity of this type of hypertrophy.

Conversely, when a muscle remains shortened continually to less than it's normal length, sacromeres at the end of muscle fibers disappear approximately equally as rapidly. It is by these processes that muscles are continually remolded to have the appropriate length for proper muscle contraction."

the sacromere is the contractile unit of the muscle that contain the actin and myosin filaments

[Aviendha]

yeah, i was taught that the muscle strength comes from the recovery...

only thing i've heard as far as what you're talking about...when i was in gymnastics, i was told that eating sugary foods afterwards would prevent the muscles from rebuilding stronger...don't know about the verity of that though...

[mcminkz05]

hmmmmm..... sugary foods? like candy and stuff? and how long after, like right after you lift or for the rest of the day?

[ashcraftpv]

I was always told to eat a can of tuna or some other high protein source right after lifting. This way your body has an extra store of protein for rebulding those muscle fibers. Stretching is always a good idea after any kind of physical activity anyway. Just a light stretch will suffice. I find it helps in recovery as I'm not usually as sore after hard workouts.

[tim hutzley]

yeah I always thought of it as just a way to reduce sorness after working out until that guy said that, and it scared me because I usualy stretch just a little or not at all.