Effects of Stretching (Wikipedia)
-Stretching doesn't prevent soreness. -"Stretching does not appear to reduce the risk of injury during exercises, except perhaps for runners.[12] There is some evidence that pre-exercise stretching may increase athletes' range of movement." - "both of these types of stretching have been shown to have a positive impact on flexibility over time by increasing muscle and joint elasticity, thus increasing the depth and range of motion an athlete is able to reach.[1] This is evident in the experiment "Acute effects of duration on sprint performance of adolescent football players." In this experiment, football players were put through different stretching durations of static and dynamic stretching to test their effects. They were tested on maximum sprinting ability and overall change in flexibility. Both static and dynamic stretching had a positive impact on flexibility but, whereas dynamic stretching had no impact on sprint times, static stretching had a negative result, worsening the time the participants were able to sprint the distance in. While the duration of stretching for dynamic had no impact on the overall results, the longer the stretch was held for static, the worse the results got, showing that the longer the duration of stretching held, the weaker the muscle became."