Originally Posted by
Trakhak
The results of a meta-analysis of a large number of studies of the relationship between stretching and injury mitigation or prevention indicated that stretching can be beneficial for such sports as soccer and football but usually not for, e.g., cycling.
From t
his article abstract:
Sports involving bouncing and jumping activities with a high intensity of stretch-shortening cycles (SSCs) [e.g. soccer and football] require a muscle-tendon unit that is compliant enough to store and release the high amount of elastic energy that benefits performance in such sports. If the participants of these sports have an insufficient compliant muscle-tendon unit, the demands in energy absorption and release may rapidly exceed the capacity of the muscle-tendon unit. This may lead to an increased risk for injury of this structure. Consequently, the rationale for injury prevention in these sports is to increase the compliance of the muscle-tendon unit. Recent studies have shown that stretching programmes can significantly influence the viscosity of the tendon and make it significantly more compliant, and when a sport demands SSCs of high intensity, stretching may be important for injury prevention.
In contrast, when the type of sports activity contains low-intensity, or limited SSCs (e.g. jogging, cycling and swimming) there is no need for a very compliant muscle-tendon unit since most of its power generation is a consequence of active (contractile) muscle work that needs to be directly transferred (by the tendon) to the articular system to generate motion. Therefore, stretching (and thus making the tendon more compliant) may not be advantageous. This conjecture is supported by the literature, where strong evidence exists that stretching has no beneficial effect on injury prevention in these sports.
One thing I have noticed over the years being a 50/50 road/mtb rider is that I need considerably more flexibility for mtb riding than road. Not in terms of range of joint articulation, but in terms of elasticity when bouncing over and dropping off stuff on the trail. It's so easy to pull a muscle on the mtb by riding aggressively when not fully warmed up.