First off, If you have sufficient mobility to perform what you want and need to do, then no, you do not need to stretch. You are able to move enough to perform the given activity, thus increasing mobility beyond the movement requirements will not improve your ability to perform the movement.
What about stretching to improve muscle soreness?
Food for thought:
Soreness likely has a component of muscle damage and stretching at higher intensities can also contribute to muscle damage which may exacerbate soreness vs improve it. Lower intensity stretching may help to temporarily alleviate soreness, but so will general movement and low intensity exercise. Light stretching and general movement can temporarily help alleviate the discomfort of soreness but they will not speed up the recovery timeline for soreness to fully subside. Soreness results in doing something you are unadapted to and is going to be dose-dependent, meaning, the larger amount of activity that you are unadapted to, the more soreness and longer timeline for recovery you will experience. The best way to improve soreness is to perform appropriately dosed training that you will adapt to over time, thus experience less and less soreness as you progress.
From research:
Studies tend to show no effect on soreness with stretching and any study that does indicate positive effect does not consistently do so with meta-analysis. Static stretching is ineffective with only a single bout of stretching after DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Acute static stretching before DOMS-inducing exercise is also ineffective in reducing DOMS.2
What about improving ROM and strength?
Static stretching can improve strength and ROM but seems to be small/trivial amounts and more so in untrained individuals. Resistance training (lifting weights) can improve ROM and improves strength to a greater magnitude.1 Resistance training can improve ROM to a similar extent as static stretching.5
What about decreasing injury risk?
There is no conclusive evidence stretching reduces injuries.
Stretching has not been shown to be effective at reducing the incidence of overall injuries. While there is some evidence of stretching reducing musculotendinous injuries, more evidence is needed to determine if stretching programs alone can reduce muscular injuries4
Why Lifting may be better:
Stretching is inherently part of full ROM lifting and the loaded stretch position is likely going to yield better ROM improvements and certainly better strength and hypertrophy than static stretching alone, thus more effective and efficient. If you are already strength training through a full ROM, there is less (if any) need for additional stretching.3
To potentially obtain similar benefits from static stretching to resistance training, static stretching likely will involve more time and frequency as evidenced by this study:
Warneke et al. (2023a, b, c) suggested static stretching as a potential alternative to common resistance-training methods, as the authors were not able to obtain significant differences in strength adaptations, muscle hypertrophy and flexibility when comparing 1 h of daily stretching with a commonly performed hypertrophy training routine (5 × 12 repetitions, three times per week).5
It took 1 hour per day of stretching compared to doing 5 sets of 12 reps 3 days per week. This would suggest lifting is certainly more time efficient than static stretching
resistance training can be assumed to be more time efficient.5
Also:
full-range RT (resistance training) is essentially, from a neuroanatomical perspective, a form of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching (where a precontraction of a muscle is followed by a full ROM passive stretch). The PNF-passive stretching is generally accepted to be more effective than passive stretching alone (9), and moreover, in a recent study investigating optimal contraction intensities for PNF stretching, it was concluded that approximately 65% of maximum isometric contraction in the precontraction produced the largest increases in ROM during the subsequent stretch (14). This level of intensity is similar to the intensity used by the RT group subjects in this study and is fairly typical of the percentage of 1RM used by many athletes and fitness exercisers in their RT sets.3
Bottom Line:
Train at tolerable, stimulative, appropriately dosed and progressed intensities and volumes so you can adapt over time which will reduce soreness. Lift through a full ROM into the loaded stretch position. This will improve your ROM over time while you are already working on strength and hypertrophy. It’s more effective and efficient overall than stretching and negates the need for any additional stretching.
References:
Arntz, F., Markov, A., Behm, D.G. et al. Chronic Effects of Static Stretching Exercises on Muscle Strength and Power in Healthy Individuals Across the Lifespan: A Systematic Review with Multi-level Meta-analysis. Sports Med 53, 723–745 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-022-01806-9
David G. Behm, Anthony D. Kay, Gabriel S. Trajano, Shahab Alizadeh, Anthony J. Blazevich; Effects of Acute and Chronic Stretching on Pain Control. Journal of Clinical Exercise Physiology 1 December 2021; 10 (4): 150–159. doi: https://doi.org/10.31189/2165-6193-10.4.150
Morton, Sam K; Whitehead, James R; Brinkert, Ronald H; Caine, Dennis J. Resistance Training vs. Static Stretching: Effects on Flexibility and Strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 25(12):p 3391-3398, December 2011. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31821624aa
Page P. Current concepts in muscle stretching for exercise and rehabilitation. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2012 Feb;7(1):109-19. PMID: 22319684; PMCID: PMC3273886.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3273886/
Wohlann, T., Warneke, K., Kalder, V. et al. Influence of 8-weeks of supervised static stretching or resistance training of pectoral major muscles on maximal strength, muscle thickness and range of motion. Eur J Appl Physiol 124, 1885–1893 (2024).https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-023-05413-y