Should I be changing this?

that makes a lot of sense. Good points, didn’t realize about those dangers before. I regularly use leg swings as prescribed by Pavel Tsatsouline – i.e. stretch out the arm at a low level and reach for it with the leg. Then lift the arm a little higher and swing the leg a little higher to reach it, etc.

Thanks for the answer,

Kurt,

for me foam rolling is priceless. I have a knee injury from basketball and foam rolling the quad/IT band releases the tension in the leg and the pain disappears.

Yavor

I also do foam rolling occasionally depending on how my body feels.

Leg swings can be done ballistically or not, it all depends on whether or not the athlete simply throws the leg and then stops controlling it or is maintaining control over the leg throughout the movement. The former *can* be problematic for some people, I like the latter when it’s appropriate.

Quad kicks can be done either way as well. So it’s not so much an issue of what’s being done as how it’s being done.

Another issue to consider is that of range of motion between the two. Quad kicks are limited in range of motion, the heel will contact the butt/upper hamstring and it’s impossible to overstretch unless someone has absurdly tight quads (in which case they have larger issues to deal with).

In contrast, it’s quite easy to throw the leg beyond normal hamstring flexibility in a ballistic stretch. This makes it potentially more injurious since you can go beyond the athlete’s safe range of motion and pull something if they are not careful.

Whereas a dynamic stretch where the leg is being controlled through progressively greater ranges of motion does not carry that risk.

I hope that makes sense.

Lyle

Yavor

I’ve recently started paying more attention to my warmup before working out or climbing and have noticed in particular that incorporating a good couple minutes of arm circles has done wonders for my shoulder health. Not sure if this would fall under ballistic or dynamic, but it seems to work wonders.

I start out with slow controlled small circles in both directions and then gradually ramp up the speed and radius. The small controlled circles take up more energy since I’m supporting the weight of my arms during the entire motion, whereas when the movements become more (ballistic?), the momentum does most of the work. As I haven’t tried doing only controlled circles or ballistic ones exclusively, I can’t be sure which element of the warmup is doing the magic.