Almost every guy needs to stretch more often and for longer. That’s a fact. Another fact is no one should stretch right before a workout. A brand-new study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology did a very interesting experiment to show that pre-workout static stretching inhibits gains in hypertrophy and strength.
Participants exposed just one leg to two 25-second bouts of static stretching and then performed four sets of leg extensions to failure for each leg. The leg that was stretched could not compete the same number of reps as the unstretched leg. By the end of the experiment, the authors of the study concluded that static stretching immediately before resistance training can contribute to a lower number of repetitions, total volume, and gains in muscle hypertrophy.