Any evidence on static stretching?

[gagskap]

I've recently been involved in a sports science project for footballers where I heard the sports scientists saying something about new evidence against static stretching before games. The way forward apparently is dynamic activity specific related exercises before the game. The only exception to this was if a player had a specific injury and felt the need to stretch a particular muscle group or if they felt it was essential to their own preperation- after all who knows their body better? I can see the reasoning behind this, microtrauma etc but have yet to see any hard evidence. Also stretching immediately post-game is to be avoided with a full stretching session to be carried out 24hours later. I would like to know of any of this evidence if anybody else has heard this.
Also is this new or are there people out there practicing this already?
As a regualr attendee of Scottish football i certainly haven't seen this being implemented in the warm ups
comments please!!

hi laura,
Its nice that ur taking inputs from sports scientists, I have also been working with the footballers and read a lot about stretching, these days it has been found that static stretches lead to reduction in the torque developed and the effect has also been studied with respect to time post stretch. I dont remember the concerned research for it but if ur keen i would try to find out and let u know. pnf stretch and dynamic stretch is preffered. one new thing even for me is that not full stretch to be given post game i will look into it also. byee gags

[Laura01]

yeah that would be ace!Ive just joined the csp so should be able to access more evidence soon- i'm having trouble at the moment since i don't have a job in the nhs i don't have an athens password and can't get access to articles.