Why do Runners Need to Stretch?

You're well aware that I am into fitness. I am a yogi first and everything else second, but I do love to work out and do whatever is active. Yesterday I jogged/ran 4.5 miles... and I think I need to up my pace because it wasn't all that hard. I mean, I was trying for steady moderate cardio, and I definitely did that but I could've worked harder without killing myself. It took me an hour (pacing ya know) and I watched a little X-Men while I was at it. Gotta love treadmill TVs.

Point being - runners need to stretch. A little stretching beforehand is fine, but afterwards it is absolutely demanded. If you don't stretch after a long run you'll fall over and die the next day. Well, maybe not die, but you might wish you were just dead with quads as tight as yours.

Why is stretching necessary? Because just like with weight training - when you work a muscle really hard it tears the muscle fibers up a little bit. They get all split up and so when they heal it's like they sew themselves back together. You get a little more tissue in the process (which makes muscles grow) and they tighten up so that the muscle will be better prepared next time and not get so torn up. Yay!

As great as that is - helping us get stronger, bigger, faster... whatever... it doesn't just tighten up metaphorically. Muscles feel tighter as they heal up from that work and if you want to keep your range of motion and decrease your chances of pulling a muscle or cramping up - you need to stretch that mess out. More on that tomorrow with a short specific little sequence of a couple of my favorite yoga stretches for runners.

Photo Source: not sure. Maybe http://fuckyeahyoga.tumblr.com/ or http://sweatsparkles.tumblr.com/
Definitely one of those... I know it's from tumblr and those are the only two tumblr blogs I watch.