Bodybuilding and Fitness - Make Muscle

Stretching is not the first thing that people (particularly men) associate with bodybuilding. Take a look around you when you are next at the gym and you will see that in general men leap straight into their workouts, maybe performing a short warm up – but no stretching.
This is more of a mistake than you might think, for stretching not only helps to warm you up, it also aids your training and general muscle fitness in other ways. These are outlined below.

Injury Prevention
Stretching your muscles, tendons and ligaments prior to working out ensures that your muscles are not tight and are at least partly saturated with blood when you begin lifting. This reduces the likelihood that you will strain or even pull a muscle or ligament. “I’ve been working out for years and have never strained a muscle.” A comment that a lot of young men make. Well that might be true. It isn’t something that tends to happen very often, particularly to the young. The thing to remember is that it only has to happen once and then that’s an end to training the affected area for days, weeks or in many cases months. All you have to do to prevent this is to ‘stretch.’
Increase of Muscle range
If you stretch regularly, then your muscle range increases and this allows you to focus each exercise on more of your muscle.
If your muscles are tight, then their range is limited and therefore any worked muscle is only exercised over a limited area. A stretched muscle however is more fluid and therefore can be exercised over a much broader and deeper area.
Now lets look at the different types of stretching.
1. Static Stretching
This is the most basic form of stretching. An example would be stretching down to touch your toes and then holding this position for several seconds.
2. Ballistic Stretching
An example of ballistic stretching would be to reach this same toe-touching position and then to bounce forward and backward to stretch the muscles and ligaments that little bit more.
3. Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic stretching is a more loose and gentle movement and is usually specific to the exercise that is about to be performed. A typical example would be that of lying on your back and mimicking the bench press immediately prior to actually performing the exercise.
So in conclusion - Stretch