Role of stretching exercises in sports

[Jani]

Stretching your muscles to improve flexibility is a widespread practice among competitive and recreational athletes. However, despite the widespread use and popularity of stretching exercises in sports with the aim to reduce the passive resistance of the muscle-tendon unit, to reduce injury risk and improve performance, there is limited or even a lack of documentation with respect to the mechanism and effect of this practice.

As a member of European College of Sports Sciences I thought let you guys know about the following published position statement that at least some of you may find useful for coaching or as a self-education purpose.

http://www.ecss.de/images/PDFs/EJSS_PosStat_Vol6,Iss2_2006b.pdf

[Cubanpuckstopper]

Thank you Jani, the article you posted raises some questions in my mind.

For the study, they state five 90 second stretches, I beleive that 90 seconds will be not be the same for a) each individual, b) different muscle groups. Is not stretching by feel a better approach?

In the study I see no mention of body temperature, is the body temperature elevated before stretching?

Personally, I am not a big fan of static stretching before, and if given ten minutes time to work with, would rather warm the body and move through some dynamic full range movements.

This article from about a year ago, http://blogs.experiencelifemag.com/surv ... truth.html

and within the article the link titled "Stretch and Reach: The Unexaggerated Truth About Stretching." http://www.experiencelifemag.com/issues ... ching.html

seem to echo a number of the points the ECSS article makes.