Stretching and Curls

Date: Weds, 13 April 2005

I picked out a few emails to share with you this week.  Alert reader Eli Konikoff sent this in regarding last weeks stretching topic:

On a related note, most of the fitness studies I've seen/read indicate that excessive stretching BEFORE a workout increases your chances of injury.  As usual, you've got it right.

Eli

Thanks, Eli.  Also, stretching before competition can hurt performance.  10 minutes of light warm up/stretch prior to the event is plenty.  You want to step into the ring with some snap still in your muscles.

The reason stretching can increase your chance of injury is this – when muscles become overly elastic they tend not to restrict movement within a range that’s safe for the tendons and joints.  Example:  you’re a yoga dude and you can put your legs behind your head.  Uhhhhhhhhh, that’s great!  Then one wintry day here in beautiful Washington, D.C. you slip on the ice.  Your muscles are looser than a politician’s ethics so they don’t contract in time and you’re sent sprawling in a very unusual (as in several women faint when they see it happen) position. Your muscles don’t tear – but now you can do a lot more than put your legs behind your head.  Moral:  muscular tension is a crucial element of function.  Or put another way – how flexible do you really want to be?

Next item:

Dear Rob,        

I recently bought a book by Bruce Lee called The Art of Expressing the Human Body. I read it and apply it to my workout but there is one exercise that it says is very effective for the forearms but is very complicated and I don’t understand how to do it. If you know how to do the Zottoman curl or a better forearm workout please e-mail me with details.              

Thank you,

Phillip

Hi Phillip, Thanks for writing.  Zottoman Curls, also called Zottman Curls, are dumbbell curls performed with the palms facing down rather than up.  You can increase difficulty by adding reverse wrist curls at the conclusion of the lift.

This is a great exercise and will definitely give you forearms like Popeye. Another forearm exercise is to wind up some plates attached to an ax handle with a rope as seen on page 104 of my international best selling mega-sensation fitness breakthrough explosion volcano super nova book Shaolin Fitness Secrets.

That’s all for today.  Please feel free to email me with any questions.  I’ll always try to steer you in the right direction, and I’m in touch with lots of people who can advise me if I need help finding an answer for you.

Train like you mean it,

Rob LaPointe