#5. Stretching during Sets Good or Bad for you?

If you are asked to stretch between working sets of heavy lifting, punch them in the face.

Not only will that stunt your performance, it is actually highly dangerous as it promotes muscle injury.

Imagine this. You have done all your build-up sets to warm up for the bench press.
1 set of 60kgs for 8
1 set of 80kgs for 5
1 set of 90kgs for 2
1 set of 100kgs for 1

for a Top Work-Set of 110kgs for 3 reps of 3 sets (3×3).
You do your first set, and then you are told to rest 3 minutes. During your resting period, you try to do a stretch because some gym bro tells you it’s good for the blood to flow to the area where you are doing your sets on. You listen to Mr. Gymbro and stretch out your pectoral muscles.

Next set arrives, and you find yourself not being able to get the second rep of the second set up. You wonder why. You can’t figure it out. Your nutrition is on point, and your sleep and all other factors are also on point.

Here’s why. When you do your build-up sets, you’re actually progressively loading your muscles with more and more weight, and your body will react by “recruiting” more muscle fibers in that muscle group to push/pull more weight. Once your warm-up sets are done, your body will have optimal muscle fiber volume to push your Top Set. When you stretch, you are “cooling down” your muscles, resulting in the “de-cruitment” of your muscle fibers. So you are defeating the purpose of your warm-ups, and if you’re unlucky, you might even tear the muscle itself.

So please don’t just listen to advice without doing some research, or simply putting some sense into it. And don’t be that Gymbro. Know your stuff first before going around to give advice. A life may be at stake due to your sub-par information.