Using Daily Stretching to Counteract Performance Decreases as a Result of Reduced Physical Activity—A Controlled Trial

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Konstantin Warneke
  • Andreas Konrad
  • Michael Keiner
  • Astrid Zech
  • Masatoshi Nakamura
  • Martin Hillebrecht
  • David G. Behm

There are many reasons for reduced physical activity leading to reduced maximal strength and sport-specific performance, such as jumping performance. These include pandemic lockdowns, serious injury, or prolonged sitting in daily work life. Consequently, such circumstances can contribute to increased morbidity and reduced physical performance. Therefore, a demand for space-saving and home-based training routines to counteract decreases in physical performance is suggested in the literature. This study aimed to investigate the possibility of using daily static stretching using a stretching board to counteract inactivity-related decreases in performance. Thirty-five (35) participants were either allocated to an intervention group (IG), performing a daily ten-minute stretch training combined with reduced physical activity or a reduced physical activity-only group (rPA). The effects on maximal voluntary contraction, range of motion using the knee-to-wall test, countermovement jump height (CMJheight), squat jump height (SJheight), drop jump height (DJheight), contact time (DJct) and the reactive strength index (DJRSI) were evaluated using a pre-test-post-test design. The rPA group reported reduced physical activity because of lockdown. Results showed significant decreases in flexibility and jump performance (d = −0.11–−0.36, p = 0.004–0.046) within the six weeks intervention period with the rPA group. In contrast, the IG showed significant increases in MVC90 (d = 0.3, p < 0.001) and ROM (d = 0.44, p < 0.001) with significant improvements in SJheight (d = 0.14, p = 0.002), while no change was measured for CMJheight and DJ performance. Hence, 10 min of daily stretching seems to be sufficient to counteract inactivity-related performance decreases in young and healthy participants.

Original languageEnglish
Article number15571
JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume19
Issue number23
Number of pages14
ISSN1661-7827
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.12.2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors.

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Unraveling Privacy Concerns in Complex Data Ecosystems with Architectural Thinking
  2. Using measures of reading time regularity (RTR) to quantify eye movement dynamics, and how they are shaped by linguistic information
  3. Life satisfaction in Germany after reunification: Additional insights on the pattern of convergence
  4. Public perceptions of CCS in context
  5. Scaling-based Least Squares Methods with Implemented Kalman filter Approach for Nano-Parameters Identification
  6. Design for Product Care—Development of Design Strategies and a Toolkit for Sustainable Consumer Behaviour
  7. Digging into the roots
  8. Teachers’ temporary support and worked-out examples as elements of scaffolding in mathematical modeling
  9. Outperformed by a Computer? - Comparing Human Decisions to Reinforcement Learning Agents, Assigning Lot Sizes in a Learning Factory
  10. Comparison of three methods of length compensation in a parallel kinematic and their equivalence conditions
  11. Towards Advanced Learning in Dispatching Rule-Based Scheuling
  12. Integrating inductive and deductive analysis to identify and characterize archetypical social-ecological systems and their changes
  13. Artificial intelligence in songwriting and composing - perspectives and challenges in creative practices
  14. Robust Estimation of Linear Fixed Effects Panel Data Models with an Application to the Exporter Productivity Premium
  15. The structure of emotions in learning situations
  16. Convergence of adaptive learning and expectational stability
  17. Development of Early Spatial Perspective-Taking - Toward a Three-Level Model
  18. Performance predictors for graphics processing units applied to dark-silicon-aware design space exploration
  19. Some surprising differences between novice and expert errors in computerized office work
  20. Explaining General and Specific Factors in Longitudinal, Multimethod, and Bifactor Models
  21. Offline question answering over linked data using limited resources
  22. How to support teachers to give feedback to modelling tasks effectively? Results from a teacher-training-study in the Co²CA project
  23. Which nudges get support - A Quantitative Analysis of the Dimensions Transparency and Dual Process Theory
  24. Early Edema Detection Based on the Examination of Multidimensional Ultra-Wide band Data
  25. A Genetic Algorithm for the Dynamic Management of Cellular Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems
  26. Structural Synthesis of Parallel Robots with Unguided Linear Actuators
  27. Crises at Work: Potentials for Change?
  28. Application of feedforward artificial neural network in Muskingum flood routing
  29. German Utilities and Distributed PV