Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the acute effects of static and dynamic stretching on soccer passing skills in intercollegiate soccer players. The study consisted of a within subjects’ experimental design were 15 males intercollegiate Division I soccer players performed three different warm-up protocols in a crossover manner. The warm-up protocol consisted of 5-minute jog followed by one of three stretching modalities, static stretching (SS), dynamic stretching (DS), and no-stretching (NS). After the warm-up protocol, athletes performed the Loughborough Soccer Passing Test (LSPT) to assess passing skill performance. Results showed no significant differences (P < 0.05) in LSPT total time performance between the three different stretching protocols (SS: 52.10 9.06 s, DS: 54.34 9.72, NS: 57.91 6.34) (P = 0.13). There was a trend showing SS having a slight time advantage on DS and NS. The results of the current study did not follow the trend of previous studies on the effects that SS and DS have on athletic performances. The hypothesis initially formulated for this study was heavily based on the vast majority of studies in the literature that attested to benefits of dynamic stretching and the negative consequences a static stretching on athletic performance. Possible explanations for what was observed include subject’s level of training (highly trained), the volume and timing of stretching, the small sample size, and the great variability occurred during the experimental procedure. In addition, a possible reason to justify the better overall performance obtained by SS, could be that having a more compliant muscle after SS benefitted passing abilities by increasing duration in energy storage. Future studies should concentrate on expanding the experimental procedure to four groups (adding a jogging group), increasing sample size, decreasing variability, and including a vaster population comparison (pro-players, collegiate, and armature).