I'm vindicated!  Actually, I just always hated stretching before exercising.  I didn't really have any thoughts about whether it was efficacious[1] or not.
One, a study being published this month in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, concluded that if you stretch before you lift weights, you may find yourself feeling weaker and wobblier than you expect during your workout. Those findings join those of another new study from Croatia, a bogglingly comprehensive re-analysis of data from earlier experiments that was published in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports. Together, the studies augment a growing scientific consensus that pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.
[1] I love saying efficacious.
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Reasons Not to Stretch
Two new studies provide additional reasons not to warm up with a stretch.
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i've never liked stretching, either. it always feels so pointless.
if you must, stretch after you exercise when your muscles are all warmed up
The article is talking about static stretching, not dynamic. Â
I haven't done pre-exercise stretching since I converted to running, but when I was in martial arts, warm up and dynamic stretching were essential parts of the starting routine. Â You didn't just start flipping opponents and executing rolls cold. Â So maybe in some activities it still has its uses…
These studies focus on performance. Stretching for me is more for injury prevention. Â I would be more curious to see the effects stretching has on injury prevention.
With regards to injury prevention, I don't know of any studies focusing on that specifically. Â However, they do mention things like participants feeling their stability was worsened by static stretching and this article (http://www.contriving.net/link/bi) talking about a comprehensive review says:
“Our interpretation of the data is that, on average, stretching really does reduce soreness, but the reduction is tiny,” Dr. Herbert told me, probably too small to be meaningful in practical terms. Most of us wouldn’t notice much difference in our muscle soreness regardless of whether we stretched.
This finding jibes with other, related science suggesting that static stretching is not particularly good at reducing injury risk, either. In the same randomized study by Dr. Herbert, those who stretched experienced about the same number of sports-related injuries as those who didn’t.
Of course, there is a real lack of blinded, randomized trials, so its hard to say.
My feeling after reading a lot of this stuff is that it's not doing anything for you with regards to injury prevention.
What I gathered was do some type of warm up but not necessarily stretching
There are also studies on stretching post-exercise causing muscle pulls while your muscles contract as they cool down.
You should do some cardio to warm up before exercising but most people aren't thinking about yoga when they just "stretch to warm up".