Stretching before exercise: an evidence based approach
One article on PainSci cites Shrier 2000: Quite a Stretch
PainSci notes on Shrier 2000:
This article is technical, but it is also excellent and heavily referenced. See MacAuley or Stretching ‘fails to stop muscle injury’ for closely related material, but more readable.
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
Clinicians are under increasing pressure to base their treatment of patients on research findings—that is, to practice evidence based medicine.1 Although some authors argue that only research from human randomised clinical trials (RCTs) should be used to determine clinical management,2 an alternative is to consider the study design (RCT, cohort, basic science, etc) as one of many variables, and that no evidence should be discarded a priori. In other words, the careful interpretation of all evidence is, and has always been, the real art of medicine.3 This editorial explores these concepts using the sport medicine example of promoting stretching before exercise to prevent injury. In summary, a previous critical review of both clinical and basic science literature suggested that such stretching would not prevent injury.4 This conclusion was subsequently supported by a large RCT published five months later.5 Had the review relied only on previous . . .
related content
- “Reducing risk of injury due to exercise: Stretching before exercise does not help,” MacAuley, British Medical Journal, 2002.
- “Stretching ‘fails to stop muscle injury’,” News.BBC.co.uk.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Cannabidiol (CBD) products for pain: ineffective, expensive, and with potential harms. Moore 2023 J Pain.
- Inciting events associated with lumbar disc herniation. Suri 2010 Spine J.
- Prediction of an extruded fragment in lumbar disc patients from clinical presentations. Pople 1994 Spine (Phila Pa 1976).
- Characteristics of patients with low back and leg pain seeking treatment in primary care: baseline results from the ATLAS cohort study. Konstantinou 2015 BMC Musculoskelet Disord.
- Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial. Kuyken 2022 Evid Based Ment Health.