Stretching is said to improve blood flow, reduce injury risk, and boost performance.

noli's read

These are three separate claims compressed into one sentence, and they don't hold up equally. On injury risk: a meta-analysis of 25 controlled trials (Lauersen et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2014, n=26,610) finds stretching has no effect (RR 0.963, not significant), versus a two-thirds reduction from strength training — stretching simply isn't the lever that protects against injury. On performance: prolonged static stretching right before an explosive effort tends to reduce the force and power produced in the following minutes (a well-documented warm-up finding), so 'boosts performance' runs against what's shown for pre-effort static stretching specifically. On blood flow: a stretch does mobilize tissue and transiently increase local flow — the most defensible part of the post — but that's an acute, local effect, not a general protective mechanism. The post pairs one real, modest effect (local circulation) with two claims that directly contradict the available literature.

the sources

1. 1Lauersen JB et al. 2014