Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Oct 18, 2015; 6(9): 719-726
Published online Oct 18, 2015. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v6.i9.719
Acute effects of static stretching on peak and end-range hamstring-to-quadriceps functional ratios
Ufuk Sekir, Ramiz Arabaci, Bedrettin Akova
Ufuk Sekir, Bedrettin Akova, Department of Sports Medicine, Medical Faculty of Uludag University, 16059 Gorukle, Bursa, Turkey
Ramiz Arabaci, Department of Physical Education and Sport Education, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Uludag University, 16059 Gorukle, Bursa, Turkey
Author contributions: Sekir U and Arabaci R contributed to concept and design the manuscript, collected the data and/or contributed to processing and literature search; Akova B contributed to supervision; Sekir U and Akova B contributed to resource, analysis and/or interpretation; Sekir U wrote the paper; Arabaci R and Akova B contributed to critical reviews.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Uludag University Faculty of Medicine Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interests between any author or institution.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at ufuksek@gmail.com. Consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is low.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Ufuk Sekir, MD, Professor, Department of Sports Medicine, Medical Faculty of Uludag University, Uludağ Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Dekanlığı, 16059 Gorukle, Bursa, Turkey. ufuksek@gmail.com
Telephone: +90-224-2953500 Fax: +90-224-2950099
Received: March 2, 2015
Peer-review started: March 3, 2015
First decision: June 9, 2015
Revised: July 22, 2015
Accepted: August 10, 2015
Article in press: August 11, 2015
Published online: October 18, 2015
Processing time: 231 Days and 16.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Despite the well-known effects of static stretching on muscle strength its effects about the characteristics of injury risk have not been investigated thoroughly. Functional hamstring-to-quadriceps (H/Q) strength ratio that reflects imbalance in thigh muscle strength is one of the etiologic risk factors for sports injuries. There are few studies in the literature investigating the relationship between static stretching and injury risk characteristics. The results of this study demonstrate that static stretching does not influence the functional H/Q ratio. Hereby, our findings also show that static stretching does not increase the risk for injury.