Shakil Ahmed

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.