Sports Massage - Stretching Before Competition

Over the past few years, a great deal of strength & conditioning research has been focused on whether or not static stretching is detrimental to an athlete’s performance when applied immediately before competition. Quite a few (but interestingly not all) studies that have shown a decrease in muscular power, strength, and agility immediately following prolonged static stretching.
This is believed to be from an inhibition of the muscle proprioceptors that leads to a reduced neural activation of the stretched muscle. That is, holding a stretch for a long period causes a reduction in the nervous system’s signals telling a muscle to contract forcefully.
So, what should we do to prepare our athlete without harming their performance? The current recommendations are to utilize dynamic-type stretching before strenuous activity, such as Muscle Energy Techniques (MET) also known as “contract-relax” stretching, or Active Isolated Stretching, because these forms utilize muscle contractions and are thought to therefore reduce the inhibition to the nervous system’s control of the muscle activity.
Most importantly, we should not try to create a large increase in an athlete’s flexibility right before competition. They made it there with the flexibility they have, they should compete that way. Their neuromuscular system may not be trained to control their bodies in a larger ROM, potentially increasing their risk of injury. Our goal should be to make their current range of motion as restriction-free as possible, with only slight increases in overall flexibility.
For post-event sports massage and maintenance massage, static stretching is still recommended to reset the muscle’s resting length and assist long-term range of motion increases.