- stretching is critical and takes time, without stretching you’ll eventually injure yourself.
- eventually you’ll get some minor injury and will have to manage that and wait for it to heal.
- start by getting a coach to specifically learn good from and find your max weights for different lifts. Strictly control trainer’s desire to add some non-core exercises, once good form is established, dismiss the trainer.
I know it's the common school of thought, but the studies I've read have found it was beneficial for flexibility, ROM, and soreness but no statistically significant impact on injuries or performance (data is mixed positive and negative for performance).
Anecdotal data is useless, but I've been lifting relatively heavy for years with little to no stretching with no ill effects. I do use warm-up sets but no other warm-up/stretching techniques. However, I am definitely open to changing my routine when the data supports it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250267/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15233597
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.525...
You have to have enough range of motion for the lift you are doing, if you lift and don't stretch, muscle tends to shorten, and eventually you are not going to have enough range. This leads to two problems:
1) Potential over-stretch under load and injury, which will require time to heal.
2) Pain in joins, like knees or shoulders. Goes away once you start stretching.
If you do some other additional activity which gets you through full range of motion, like yoga or some active sport, then there is really no need to do extra stretching, otherwise, for me, stretching is required.
If your training has at its core multi-joint compound exercises, you shouldn't have to worry about your mobility.
For this audience, I would recommend reading/scanning StartingStrength.com, or the book of the same name by Mark Rippetoe.
This is good book:
https://www.amazon.com/Stretching-Pocket-Book-Bob-Anderson/d...
This strap is really helpful:
That said, I do agree there should be more flexibility work. The suggested warm ups are also inadequate.
Among others, listed here[a]. The reasoning seemed sound and I'm easily swayed, so reading that after a couple of weeks of doing 5x5 caused me to switch. Exercises are the same (with the addition of chinups), but configured differently throughout the week. It's easy enough to set up the workouts in the Strong[b] app, but admittedly not as easy as the Stronglifts app.
[a] : https://old.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/4uij/a_detailed_lo...
[b] : https://www.strong.app/
- the lifts in it are simple, but also very easy to hurt yourself with if you don’t have good form. Form work is not emphasized.
- there is no flexibility work in it. It’s basically impossible to do strength work without flexibility. To the point 5x5 should likely recommend yoga as a central component or something.
- while big muscle groups are very important, for lots of people isolated muscle work is necessary to fix imbalances, old injuries, etc.
None of that should discourage people but realize that the sticker claims of 5x5 about time commitments and completeness aren’t really true.