Twelve years. Every single run, whether it was a drizzly Tuesday evening 5K or a Sunday long run — started the same way: shoes on, find a wall, hold a quad stretch for 30 seconds, reach for the hamstrings, pull on a calf. It felt conscientious. Responsible, even. The sort of thing serious runners do. Then a physiotherapist watched me do it and, barely half a minute in, quietly asked me to stop.
She wasn’t being dramatic. She was applying what sports science has been saying clearly for the better part of two decades, and what most recreational runners have simply never been told.
Key takeaways
- A physio stopped a runner’s pre-run stretching routine cold—but why would a warm-up strategy suddenly be wrong after 12 years?
- Static stretching on cold muscles might actually reduce your power and efficiency, not protect you
- There’s a completely different warm-up framework that takes the same time but genuinely prepares your body for running
The problem with stretching cold muscles
The routine I’d built was a textbook example of static stretching: holding a muscle at its end range for a sustained period before exercise. Cold muscles are less pliable, and holding a static stretch before they are warm may lead to overstretching or small muscle tears, particularly in tendons and connective tissues. That image, tendons being pulled on before they’ve had a chance to warm up — is uncomfortable to sit with when you’ve been doing exactly that for years.
The belief that this kind of stretching prevents injury is one of the most persistent myths in recreational sport. Contrary to popular belief, static stretching before exercise has not been shown to reduce injury risk. Injuries are often due to factors like muscle fatigue, improper biomechanics, or inadequate strength, rather than muscle tightness alone. There’s also a mechanical argument worth understanding. Running relies on the stretch-shortening cycle, where muscles and tendons store and release energy like a spring. Static stretching dampens this natural elasticity, making your muscles less efficient and potentially increasing energy expenditure.
Think of your Achilles tendon as a compressed coil. The Achilles tendon alone can store and return up to 35% of the energy needed for each stride, making running significantly more efficient. Pre-run static stretching blunts that recoil. The stretch-shortening cycle becomes less efficient after static stretching, reducing the body’s ability to rapidly store and release elastic energy. You end up working harder to move at the same pace, and you’ve started the whole thing by putting cold tissue under load.
What the research actually says about performance
A growing body of research indicates that pre-event static stretching of the prime movers may actually have a negative effect on force production, power performance, strength endurance, reaction time, and running speed. There is little scientific evidence to suggest that pre-event static stretching prevents activity-related injury or enhances athletic performance.
The dose matters, though, and the picture is more nuanced than a blanket “never stretch.” When performed as a single-mode treatment or integrated within a full warm-up routine, short-duration static stretching of 60 seconds or less per muscle group causes only trivial Performance impairments of around 1–2%. However, longer static stretching durations of more than 60 seconds per muscle group appear to induce substantial declines in strength and power of 4–7.5%. Most runners holding a hamstring stretch for a lazy minute and a half, without having jogged a single step first, are firmly in that second category.
Dynamic stretching, which involves moving your limbs through a range of motion during warm-up, such as leg swings or walking lunges, improves running economy significantly more than static stretching. Research has shown that dynamic stretching improved running economy more significantly than static stretching, with both reducing perceived effort during running. That last point is worth noting: perception of effort matters enormously for recreational runners. Running that feels easier tends to go better.
What a proper warm-up actually looks like
The framework increasingly used by physiotherapists and coaches is the RAMP protocol. RAMP stands for Raise, Activate, Mobilise, Potentiate: raise heart rate and blood flow with light jogging or easy movements; activate the muscle groups you’ll rely on most, like glutes and core; mobilise joints and range of motion with dynamic drills such as hip openers, ankle mobility, and walking lunges; then potentiate your body for intensity with short strides or running drills.
Dynamic warm-ups have been shown to have physiological benefits on the musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiovascular, and psychological systems. Musculoskeletal improvements include improved joint range of motion, muscle flexibility, and force production; increased muscle temperature; and increased tissue extensibility. Neurological effects include improvements in nerve conduction velocity and muscle activation via enhanced motor unit recruitment.
Practically, this might look like: two minutes of brisk walking or very easy jogging, followed by leg swings (front-to-back and side-to-side), walking lunges with a gentle torso rotation, heel flicks, high knees, and three or four short strides at progressively faster pace. A 5–10 minute warm-up is sufficient to increase your heart rate and get you going, and these warm-ups should be light but dynamic to help increase blood flow. The whole thing takes less time than my old quad-and-hamstring routine, and it actually prepares the body for the demands of running.
Performing deep, static stretches on cold muscles before exercise is ineffective and may even reduce power output or increase injury risk. A simple, expert-guided rule is: your warm-up is about movement, your cool-down is about holding.
Where static stretching does earn its place
None of this means static stretching is useless, only that its timing has been wrong for most of us. You should not completely eliminate static stretching from your training routine. Perform a dynamic warm-up before a run, but save static stretching for tight areas after your cool-down or after cross-training.
Static stretching can improve joint flexibility and length of a muscle, relax tissue, be helpful psychologically, and help you feel more mobile. After a run, when muscles are genuinely warm and pliable, holding a stretch becomes both safer and more effective for the long-term flexibility work it’s actually designed to do. Targeted static stretches help lengthen and relax muscles after exercise’s physical stress, which may boost flexibility and range of motion, allowing you to move more efficiently in daily life and future workouts.
The irony, of course, is that the stretch I was doing to protect myself may have been doing the opposite, and the five minutes I’d have spent on dynamic drills could have made each of those 12 years of running feel perceptibly easier. One further detail worth knowing: there is some evidence that pre-activity stretching, whether static, dynamic, or PNF, can reduce muscle injuries in sprinting and shorter distance running — but this applies specifically to activities involving explosive muscle strains, not steady-paced endurance running. For your average park run or morning jog, the case for static pre-run stretching simply doesn’t hold. Move first. Stretch later.
Please consult your GP or a qualified physiotherapist before making changes to your exercise routine, particularly if you are managing an injury or a chronic health condition.
Sources : ncbi.nlm.nih.gov | pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov