Saturday, October 31, 2009

P90X Day 84: X Stretch




Stretching feels damn good. I woke up feeling a little achy and creaky, and was happy that X Stretch was scheduled for today.

But does stretching actually do any good? I dug up yet another New York Times piece by Gina Kolata, concluding that "[t]he truth is that after dozens of studies and years of debate, no one really knows whether stretching helps, harms, or does anything in particular for performance or injury rates." Yes, stretching can make you more flexible, but there's no evidence of its benefits.

As I've mentioned before, Kolata also recently wrote an article explaining that cool-downs are unnecessary. Assuming her reporting is accurate, by skipping both X Stretch and our daily cool-downs during P90X, we could save an hour-and-a-half per week -- almost 20 hours over the course of a single round of P90X -- without adversely affecting our overall athletic performance.

Like I said earlier, stretching feels damn good. But sleeping in feels even better.