Dynamic Stretching: Second Edition: Active Movement Workouts to Improve Power, Performance, Flexibility, and Range of Motion

Transform your athletic abilities with dynamic stretching to help you stay healthy and improve your overall fitness―now with all-new stretching programs!

Today’s fitness experts have learned that both stretching and how you stretch can affect how well you perform on the field, court, or track. Research shows that static stretching, a traditional mainstay of athletes’ warm-ups, has a measurable negative impact on performance. Holding a stretch for 30 seconds or longer doesn’t prepare a muscle for exercise; it can actually weaken the muscle.

That’s where Dynamic Stretching, Second Edition comes in. This guide teaches you how to effectively prepare your body for physical activity while simultaneously improving strength, power, speed, agility, and endurance. Now with more than 70 exercises―illustrated with step-by-step photos―and fully updated information on the latest stretching research, this book will maximize your workouts and take your athletic abilities to the next level by:

• Developing full-body range of motion

• Enhancing full-body motor control

• Increasing flexibility, balance, and muscular endurance

• Improving force generation and reaction time

• Correcting major and minor muscle imbalances

Once you learn the basics of dynamic stretching, dive into the dynamic stretching warm-up programs that have been carefully designed for the individual needs of athletes in more than 30 different sports, including running, tennis, basketball, baseball and softball, football, hockey, skiing, and many more.

Mark Kovacs, PhD, is manager of sports science for the United States Tennis Association Player Development. He was an All-American and NCAA doubles champion at Auburn University. After playing professionally, he pursued his graduate work in exercise science from Auburn University and a PhD in exercise physiology from the University of Alabama. Dr. Kovacs is also a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, a certified health/fitness instructor through the American College of Sports Medicine, a United States Track and Field Level II sprints coach, and also a USPTA certified tennis coach. Mark is also an author of the tennis conditioning text Tennis Training: Enhancing On-Court Performance and is currently an associate editor of the Strength and Conditioning Journal.