Ballistic Stretching

Ballistic stretching involves body or limb momentum to forcibly increase the range of motion of a muscle. This can be quite dangerous. There are only a couple of instances where something approaching this type of stretching is used. In the front splits a gentle up and down movement may be useful but isometric stretching is probably a better method. Stride jumps are partially ballistic but the springing movement as the legs are alternated is far from full length of the hamstrings. A true ballistic stretch would be to slip directly down into the front split position with little or no control and bounce back up. Definitely not recommended unless extremely flexible. Ballistic stretching is probably more useful for very flexible people who need to increase range but for whom other methods bring no further results. Ballistic stretching is still dangerous, however, and at this level of flexibility unlikely to produce any useful gains.