Why do we do the Sampson Stretch for our official Crossfit Warm-up? There has been a din lately about stretching, especially static stretching. Our resident gymnastics coaches endorse stretching after a workout. Dan John says overhead squats are all you need and stretching, especially in warm-ups could cause injury! I’m not going to argue with any of them…but we do the Sampson stretch IN OUR WARMUPS, seemingly against all coaches advise. Ok first off what is the Sampson stretch: Link your fingers together at eye level, arms straight, palms facing away from your body. Go into a lunge, with your rear knee on the floor, raise your arms over your head, and now really stretch your HIP FLEXORS, and shoulders, hold for 15 - 30 seconds, switch legs. Hey, that’s a static stretch, for the hip flexors, prior to exercise!

A number of studies have been conducted which show static stretching, prior to weight training weakens the contraction (Google it, no need for me to link). This is BAD. We don’t want weak contractions prior to weight training, do we? Well let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead let’s do a little test. Put some chalk on your fingers of your dominant hand. Stand next to a wall, and jump as high as you can (vertical jump) touch the wall. For you naysayers out there…rest three minutes and repeat. Now rest up 5 - 10 minutes. Prior to conducting your little jump test, do the Sampson stretch, really static stretch those hip flexors. Now do the test. Whoa, you jumped higher didn’t you! How is this possible. Well, coaches preparing college football players for the NFL combine tests have been doing this for years to improve vertical jump. What we are doing is making your hip flexors weaker by static stretching them…yep, now the drive upward (using your posterior chain) in not slowed down by those pesky tight hip flexors.

Think of it this way: Go into a squat and think of your hip flexors as springs. If those springs are short and tightened they slow down your upward push, completely release the tension of the spring and your up like a rocket. So how does this translate to us… we don’t do a lot of jumping, but jumping exhibits triple extension. We do a lot of triple and double extension. All O-lifts are triple extension squats and deadlifts are double extension. When performing these lifts we want to explode upward…our tight, strong hip flexors inhibit us. Static stretching them frees us to exhibit greater power. Once again Coach drops a gem in, with no comment, and it’s genius. Comments?