Yet another study has come to the conclusion that stretching has no effect on reducing injury risk.
Researchers in Denmark reviewed 25 trials involving over 26,000 people and covering over 4000 injuries. They found that strength training had the biggest impact on reducing injury risk with the potential to cut sports injuries to less than 1/3 and reduce overuse injuries by almost half.
As I have written recently here, injury is the result of a mismatch between the forces applied to your body and your body’s ability to tolerate those forces. This can be in a single incident, a bad tackle for example, or repeated trauma in the form of an overuse type injury.
Research on stretching has repeatedly shown that it reduces the ability of the muscular system to produce force. So how would making you weaker and thus less able to tolerate force reduce your injury risk? It doesn’t of course.
In fact it is entirely counterproductive to most people’s goals.
Improving the contractile capability of your muscular system and thus your ability to tolerate force is the only conceivable way to reduce injury risk. Strength training will achieve this if intelligently applied.