Hi,

You know the routine. Ten minutes before kick-off, the team fans out across the pitch and starts going through the motions. A bit of quad stretching, some hamstring holds, maybe a hip flexor or two. None of the kids really want to do it.

Here's the thing: the research backs the kids up on this one.

Static stretching, the hold-it-for-30-seconds kind, doesn't reduce the risk of injury. On top of that, it temporarily reduces both performance and the muscle's ability to protect itself against sudden loading.

Right before a match. At the exact moment you'd want both at their best.

The argument for stretching is almost always about flexibility. Kids need to be flexible enough to play football. I actually agree with that. What I'd push back on is the follow-up: flexible enough by what measure? How many degrees of hip flexion? What hamstring length exactly? I've never heard a convincing answer, because there isn't one.

Attempts have been made to quantify it. There's even a whole system built around this idea, and despite a lot of research, no one has been able to reliably connect a specific flexibility threshold to better performance or fewer injuries.

What I find most interesting: when we look at when muscle injuries, hamstring strains for instance, actually happen in matches, they don't cluster in the last ten minutes when legs are heavy and tired. They cluster in the first fifteen minutes of each half. The opening period, when muscles should be at their most ready, is when most of the damage occurs. That strongly suggests the issue isn't fatigue — it's preparation. And a muscle that just spent five minutes being held at its passive end range is worse at resisting the sudden, forceful lengthening that causes a strain in the first place.

(One more thing worth knowing: isolated muscle injuries, the pure tears and strains, are almost exclusively a post-puberty problem. Kids who haven't gone through puberty simply don't get them. So if your child is still prepubescent, the argument for static stretching is even thinner.)

For what it's worth: the Royal Ballet School in London — people who have perhaps the most legitimate flexibility argument of anyone — have moved away from static stretching. They do strength work specifically aimed at controlling movement at the very end of their ranges of motion. If the people with the strongest case for it decided it wasn't worth it, that tells you something.

I get that youth football isn't meant to be comfortable all the time. There are real lessons in perseverance, in pushing through hard things as a team. But that doesn't make a pre-game stretching routine useful. No kid has ever gone to football for the stretching. They go to play. And if it doesn't reduce injuries, doesn't improve performance, actively reduces performance in the short term, is boring, and is sometimes painful too — I genuinely don't know what we're doing it for.

Please stop. For the love of the game.

Best,

Hans Martin

P.S. If you've ever pushed back on this at your child's club — or if a coach actually listened — I'd love to hear about it. Reply and tell me.

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