Research brief · 2026-09-09
Does Stretching Prevent Injury?
Stretching before exercise is one of the most widespread habits in sport, and it comes with an assumption: it keeps you from getting hurt. The trials that tested that assumption directly, stretching versus no stretching with injuries counted, have not supported it.
The foundational analysis is Thacker's 2004 systematic review in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, produced by the CDC's Epidemiology Program Office. From 361 candidate articles, six directly compared stretching against another approach for preventing injury. The pooled odds ratio was 0.93, with a confidence interval running from 0.78 to 1.11. That interval comfortably spans no effect. The authors concluded there was not enough evidence to endorse or discontinue routine stretching for injury prevention.
The largest single trial behind that review is Pope's 2000 study in the same journal. Researchers randomized 1,538 male army recruits to add static stretching of six leg muscle groups before every session, or not, across 12 weeks of basic training. There were 158 lower-limb injuries in the stretch group and 175 in the control group, a difference that did not reach significance for any injury category. The one factor that did predict injury was baseline fitness.
Stretching does reliably improve flexibility. Rudisill's 2022 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, covering 108 randomized trials on hamstring injury, found static stretching produced the largest range-of-motion gains of any method. But in the same review it was eccentric strength training, not stretching, that reduced hamstring injury rates by 57 to 70 percent. A 2025 meta-analysis in Annals of Human Biology found static stretching temporarily worsened balance compared with dynamic stretching.
The limit is scope. Most of the strongest evidence comes from military recruits and hamstring-focused trials tracked over weeks. Whether years of habitual stretching, or stretching in contact or overuse sports, changes injury risk has not been tested. Anyone managing an injury should work with a physician or physiotherapist.
Sources
- Thacker SB et al. The impact of stretching on sports injury risk: a systematic review of the literature
- Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 2004
- Pope RP et al. A randomized trial of preexercise stretching for prevention of lower-limb injury
- Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 2000
- Rudisill SS et al. Evidence-Based Hamstring Injury Prevention and Risk Factor Management: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
- American Journal of Sports Medicine 2022
- Guo W et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of stretching techniques on balance performance
- Annals of Human Biology 2025
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