It may not rank up there with a fire station burning down or an ophthalmologist going blind, but it's close. That a headline for this column would invoke an old tagline from the restaurant chain that brought you the Bloomin' Onion - that egregious appetizer containing 1954 calories, 154.7 grams of fat, and 3841.1 grams of sodium - is, in a word, ironic.

It's also, provided you properly interpret the quotation marks, an appropriate encapsulation of that thing many of you loathe to do before and/or after exercise: stretch.Here's some help with the quotation marks. They allow for the fact that there's certainly a right way and a wrong way to stretch, but once you learn the correct form, that's it.Nothing else is etched in stone. Take it from the Outback Steakhouse. No rules, just right.But there's certainly a series of stretches, a duration, and a frequency that's optimal for you.Unfortunately, I can't prescribe that pattern for you. It's not a copout; it's the truth. That's because you need to consider your age, your previous and possibly current injuries, your preferred type of exercise, and the degree of intensity with which you work out to piece together a program that's more than perfunctory.Stretching is supposed to make you and your muscles feel good, prepare both for the workout - today's or tomorrow's - and possibly even provide some meditation time if you are so inclined. It's easy to make your time stretching meditative because feeling the sensations in your muscles encourages mindfulness.Stretching is supposed to be the opposite of what Mr. Seip, my high school baseball coach, turned it into: a quasi-competition and a sometimes-painful experience. During our pre-practice routine, for example, he would instruct us to raise a leg so that our ankle sat on the shoulder of a partner. We were then supposed to touch our nose to the elevated knee."Drive that nose to your knee," he'd command. "Touch 'em together and hold 'em there."But in the same way "A League of Their Own" explains "there's no crying in baseball," there's no driving in stretching - regardless of the stretch, regardless of the sport, regardless of the individual. Such a movement is too quick and violent.In this case, instead of causing the targeted muscle groups, the hamstrings and the glutes, to loosen and elongate, mine would tighten and contract. As a result, my nose would not make contact with my knee.If Coach Seip saw that, he'd instruct my partner to press on the back of my head to force the contact.My hamstrings and glutes would sting a bit and contract even more. When the sting ended, however, the tension in those muscles stayed, making it tougher, not easier, to race after a fly ball, react quickly to a ground ball, accelerate out of the batter's box - or do Mr Seip's dreaded hill sprints that often ended practice.In short, any stretch performed quickly and violently is counterproductive and potentially dangerous. Two of my baseball-playing buddies, in fact, missed segments of their senior seasons because of strained hamstrings.Here's the key to stretching any group of muscles productively: ease into it. "Easy, easy" is my mental mantra all the time - even as I tilt at the torso to begin a stretch as basic as the toe touch.At the first sign of muscle tension, I hold that spot and focus on breathing slowly and deeply. I create the mental image of my torso "falling" forward like water cascading from a waterfall. I keep that image, keep breathing deeply, and let myself "fall." Almost magically, my fingertips find the floor.If I do this before a workout, I then ball my fists and touch my knuckles to the floor. If I do this after a workout - especially during a hot shower - I'll sometimes go deeper and touch my palms to the tub. But I'll never create muscle discomfort to do so.Regardless of the depth of any stretch, as long as the targeted muscles relax and elongate, you benefit. That's true even if you create a stretch that you've never seen in a manual or do one that many experts advise against.That second circumstance is why I used the toe touch as my previous example.According to SportMedBC, a network of health practitioners headquartered at the University of British Columbia, the toe touch is one of the stretches "generally considered to have the greatest potential for causing injury." And since the stretch (especially if done incorrectly) can adversely affect the lower back ligaments, that might be true for you.But I feel it's a great stretch for me. Literally. I can feel my hamstrings relax in that position. My lower back even loosens, too.Yet my brother has already thrown his back out doing it.Another reason why you must create your own program and not blindly follow mine.