Stretching to reduce DOMS?

Don't change your stretching habits

Static stretching after activity may not significantly reduce DOMS, but that is not a good reason to stop doing stretches.  I think if you were to do a poll of say a hundred runners who stretch, a huge majority of them stretch because they believe it will reduce the likelihood of them developing an injury rather than preventing DOMS.  Certainly from my point of view, when I stretch after activity it is to loosen the muscles to prevent shortening and allow better performance next time I run and to stop myself “pulling” muscles that have become tight over time. 

For a vast majority of us, who are not aiming to train at an international level, if DOMS is a particular problem one day we can choose to have that day as a rest day or perhaps do some cross training, or manage a more gentle run, and therefore it does not cause a significant problem. Most runners will also do other activities in order to try to avoid DOMS after a particularly heavy training session. It may be that they stretch and have a warm bath, or an ice bath, or get a sports massage, or even take Ibuprofen or similar. 

Herein lies the danger of taking note of an articles’ conclusions without looking into them further. The articles used for this review only take into account those using only stretching to reduce DOMS, whereas most people will use stretching in conjunction with something else. I would suggest that what also needs to be researched is whether stretching adds to the efficacy of using heat or any other modality to counteract DOMS. The other important point of note to take in to account when reading articles is that in the not too distant future, there may be another article that suggests stretching does reduce DOMS, after all the review that was done into the same topic, prior to this most recent review, concluded that stretching did have an effect on reducing DOMS.

Whilst the most recent research is interesting, and does contradict previous thoughts on the matter, I would not suggest changing your stretching habits in light of this new research. Yes, you might not be any less achey because you stretch, but you might avoid a painful and lengthy lay off due to a muscle tear caused by tight muscles. You might also find that your combined approach of stretching and having a warm bath, or whatever it is you do, does reduce DOMS, after all nobody is exactly sure what causes DOMS now, which means, nobody is exactly sure what will reduce it!