Old Way: Stretch before or after you work out
New Way: Stretch at other times of the day
While it may feel good to stretch your hamstrings and quads before or after your workout, there’s little scientific evidence that stretching before or after exercise decreases your injury risk or improves exercise performance. Where stretching can help you the most, however, is when you use it as part of flexibility training to increase your functional range of motion, which can counteract the stiffness you get from sitting at your desk all day and help you to reduce injury risk. When stretching to increase flexibility, doing it apart from your running workout seems to have the greatest benefit.