What If Stretching Doesn’t Really Help?

I’ve always thought that stretching would unambiguously help muscles. But it appears that things aren’t that simple. From the NY Times:

The truth is that after dozens of studies and years of debate, no one really knows whether stretching helps, harms, or does anything in particular for performance or injury rates. Yet most athletes remain convinced that stretching helps, and recently more and more have felt a sort of social pressure to show that they are limber, in part due to the popularity of yoga. Flexibility has become another area where many athletes want to excel.

…
Some athletes — gymnasts, hurdlers and swimmers among them — may need to stretch to gain the flexibility they need for their sport, Dr. McHugh said.

But distance runners do not benefit from being flexible, he found. The most efficient runners, those who exerted the least effort to maintain a pace, were the stiffest.

While the stretching debate goes on, some researchers who used to believe in stretching say they have become disillusioned.

Stacy J. Ingraham, an exercise physiologist at the University of Minnesota and a long distance runner, suffered from hamstring injuries when she was on a team. She stretched and stretched, for months on end, to no avail.

That made her wonder about stretching’s benefits, as did her subsequent years of coaching female high-school and college cross-country runners. Her runners stretched but, Dr. Ingraham said, stretching “did not seem to do what we’d been schooled about all our lives — it did not prevent injuries.”

She reviewed published papers, saw none that convinced her that stretching either protected people from injuries or improved performance, and became an antistretching evangelist.

“Runners don’t need to stretch,” she insists.

Dr. Charles Kenny, an orthopedist in private practice in Stockbridge, Mass., is even more adamantly opposed to stretching. The practice, he said, weakens performance and makes an injury more likely.

“If stretching was a drug, it would be recalled,” Dr. Kenny said.