It's pretty clear (these are well controlled studies with many subjects)that stretching before exercise does not decrease the incidence of injury and can affect performance. It makes sense to me that this is the case. When you stretch you alter the length of the muscle. It takes time for your nervous system to adapt to this change in the muscle length-tension relationship. In the meanwhile, your muscles may not fire rapidly enough to stabilize and protect a joint during an activity.

What I have a problem with is the pervailing attitude in the media that suggests that these results mean that stretching is of no benefit. That's what gets put in the head lines.

Stretching when prescribed properly for the right diagnosis makes a huge difference. RnR girl gave the perfect example, IT band friction syndrome. Give me a hundred ITBS patients that are runners, everyone of them still able to perform full range of motion for their sport but unable to do their sport without pain and divide them into 2 groups - one that has regular stretching everyday as part of their home program and the other group identical but no stretching. I know which one I would put my money on. Just because you have full range of motion doesn't mean you have good muscle balance or length tension relationships. Dysfunction in these areas will lead to injury with repetitive motion due to excessive stresses on the involved tissues.

It drives me crazy when I'm trying to convince people that they need to stretch and the media comes out with headlines that stretching is useless.

OK getting off my soap box.