Stretching prevents injury. That idea was drilled into my head at an early age, and I can’t quite get rid of it.
Since I was a child, my P.E. teachers and coaches preached the virtue of stretching so consistently, that the pre-game stretch became almost like a religious ritual. So I was shocked to find out there is no evidence stretching prevents injury. Not only that, certain kinds of stretching may hurt an athlete’s performance for up to an hour.
The Theory that Stretching Prevents Injury
Stretching does increase range of motion. We’ve all seen the fantastic positions that yoga teachers can assume. Range of motion matters for activities of daily life, and helps succeed in sports. It’s hard to imagine Roger Federer reaching all the balls he volleys at the Wimbledon net without good range of motion.
And it’s reasonable to assume that people who can move in more directions without pain will suffer less pain when they play sports.
But when researchers compare athletes who stretch to athletes who don’t they usually find no difference in pain or injury rates.
For example, for a study published in 1999 Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers divided 1,538 male army recruits into two groups. Both groups performed warm-ups during their 12 weeks of training. But one group did an additional 20-second static stretch.
A static stretch is the type most us learned in school: You take a position that extends a joint farther than is comfortable, and hold that position for several seconds. Most of the stretching done in Iyengar yoga is static.
The researchers counted 158 lower limb injuries in the group that stretched, and 175 in the group that did not stretch. The difference was so small that the researchers concluded static stretching was not worthwhile.
Since then several similar studies have also challenged the notion that stretching prevents injury. A few have found contradictory results, and experts disagree about what to recommend.
One theory is that stretching doesn’t actually increase the length of muscles or tendons in the short term, it just teaches them to relax. But when they are more relaxed, they can’t perform as well in sports, at least temporarily.
For this reason, the FIFA11+ program for preventing soccer injuries doesn’t include any stretching component.
Some researchers are advocating a different type of stretching: dynamic stretching, in which you extend a limb slightly farther than is comfortable, but as soon as you reach this position you reverse it. In theory, your nerves don’t have time to relax, and so your performance won’t be harmed.
This video by Josh Lee shows some examples of dynamic stretching.
There isn’t a lot of evidence that this type of stretching prevents injury either. On the other hand, it does not appear to hamper performance, and does increase range of motion.
More research is underway, but for the time being I recommend doing this type of stretch.
I also do yoga. There’s not evidence the yoga-type of stretching prevents injury either, but it has a lot of other benefits for ailments as diverse as arthritis and cancer. Besides that, I just like doing it.
Thanks for this. I like dynamic stretching before I play. I also think that while a lot of stretching increases one’s range of motion, it negatively impacts one’s quick step.
Is there any information about stretching after playing? From my anecdotal experience, it seems that players are less sore and have a greater range of motion the next day if they stretch after playing.
Hi Sandra. I did find one study on delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). That’s the pain you feel the next day, or even a couple days after a really hard workout where you push your muscles to do things they’re not used to doing. Stretching did NOT reduce this type of soreness. However most experts still seem to be recommending stretching after sports on the theory that it increases range of motion. Range of motion is probably more important in ball sports where you have unpredictable movements in many directions than in sports like running, bicycling and swimming where you move mostly in one line.
Thanks!
I think range of movement is also important in many aspects of daily life. I see so many people who lose it and then wind up injuring themselves doing common movements.
It’s hard for me to believe that stretching afterwards doesn’t have an effect on DOM. My personal experience tells me otherwise but maybe there is some sort of placebo effect? I guess future studies will tell us more.
I definitely agree with you about the importance of range of motion for daily life. The maxim “lose it or lose it” probably applies here. If you don’t reach your arms over your head often enough, you eventually lose the ability to reach your arms over your head.
On the other hand, I don’t have much confidence that stretching can prevent DOMS or other soreness. Why would it? DOMS is apparently caused by the tearing of muscle fibers, and it’s hard to see why stretching those same fibers would make them feel better.