Is there more science behind it than just readying your body for a workout or laborious activity?
In: Biology
Yes, but it’s alright if you don’t. It’s basically like a heads up to your muscles to get ready. Otherwise you will get DOMS. Which basically means your muscles would pain later on.
There are multiple types of stretching. There is static stretching, which means you are initiating a stretch and holding still in the lengthened position. The primary purpose of this is to send signals to the golgi tendon organs to relax, otherwise their job is to inhibit what they perceive as dangerously high tension. The more you send signals to the GTO to relax Ames stop inhibiting your stretches, the more flexible you become over time.
Dynamic stretching is movement/action based stretching, where you take a muscle through a full range of motion repeatedly. Something like arm/leg swings, or trunk rotations. This also sends signals to the GTO to relax and acutely improve flexibility, but also serves as a way to heighten blood flow toward whatever muscles you’re exerting.
Promoting blood flow is arguably the most important part of any warmup, hence why it’s called a warmup. You are literally warming up the muscle you intend to exert. Dynamic stretching is the superior type if you are about to perform any strength-based activity because of this. Static stretching has been shown to acutely reduce contraction strength and maximal force output after your muscles experience prolonged exposure to lengthened positions (more than 60s of static stretching).
As a side note, I’d also argue that stretching before something like weightlifting doesn’t provide any unique benefits you wouldn’t be able to also get from simply performing your exercises at a lower intensity with full range of motion to warm up.
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