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Can you point me to a study that shows stretching has a statistically significant positive impact on injury rates?

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...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15076777



Well, my personal take, based on experience, is this:

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.


Lifting is basically weighted stretching. You can't train a movement and lose mobility for the range of motion you're training.

If your training has at its core multi-joint compound exercises, you shouldn't have to worry about your mobility.




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