Youāre probably here because you have a problem most of us know a little too well.
You hit the gym pretty hard, tried a new workout, or perhaps simply got a little too ambitious after not exercising for a while. And now you’re either dreading tomorrow’s soreness or already experiencing that dull, achy reminder of yesterday’s overambition that you wish to go away by like- yesterday.
Maybe you’ve already stretched it out. Or you’ve been told you should stretch. There’s probably something about lactic acid floating around somewhere in the back of your mind.
So, does stretching after exercise actually help prevent or reduce muscle soreness?
It feels like it should, right? But does science agree?
The Short Answer
Probably not- at least not by very much.
If stretching after exercising is part of your routine and it is something you enjoy that is a perfectly fine thing to do. But the nuance is in the fact that current evidence doesn’t show that stretching provides a meaningful reduction or prevents any kind of delayed-onset muscle soreness in comparison to just recovering normally without doing so.
But keep in mind, that this also doesn’t mean that stretching is automatically useless. It can have other purposes, and some people also simply enjoy the feeling of post-exercise stretching. That in itself has purpose as well.
BUT if your goal is specifically: āPlease make tomorrow’s muscle soreness go away.ā Then I have to give you the unfortunate answer that stretching is not the magic cure here.
So in plain English: If you’re someone that likes stretching, continue doing so just because you do like it! However, do not put too much faith into stretching saving you from an achy leg in the morning.
What Does The Evidence Actually Say?
One of the referenced sources, a 2025 meta-analysis looked specifically at stretching after exercise and combined 15 studies involving 465 participants. The result was fairly straightforward: post-exercise stretching did not significantly reduce muscle soreness compared with doing no stretching at all.
And this isn’t the first review to end up with that conclusion.
Another 2021 meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials compared post-exercise stretching with passive recovery. Which is essentially allowing your body to recover without doing anything special.
Once again, there wasn’t a meaningful difference in soreness at 24, 48 or 72 hours which the researchers could find.
In other words, stretching your aching legs after your workout in comparison to simply going about your day seemed to produce roughly the same outcome.
There is a twist though! There are individual studies that have found something different, thus changing their conclusion. One 2021 trial in 60 young, previously untrained adults found that active isolated stretching before unfamiliar strenuous exercise helped participants recover from soreness somewhat faster.
That’s actually an important distinction: it involved a particular type of stretching, performed before exercise, in a very specific group of people.
Yet the somewhat disappointing current verdict is that.. When researchers pool the broader evidence together, the overall benefit still disappears.
š¬ For the curious: So if stretching does not really help.. does ANYTHING?
Potentially!
A large 2018 review compared several recovery strategies and found that massaging produced some of the clearest reductions in delayed muscle soreness and perceived fatigue.
In addition to these positive findings, there were also benefits that came from compression garments, water immersion and some other recovery strategies.
That, however, still doesn’t mean that booking massages post workout sessions is more than just relaxation time.
But it does show us something interesting: The research isn’t saying ānothing can help muscle soreness.ā It’s saying that stretching specifically doesn’t appear to be particularly good at it.
What Changes The Answer?
This evidence isn’t perfect. Stretching studies use different techniques, different durations and different timings. Some investigate static stretching, others use active or dynamic methods. Participants can also range from sedentary people suddenly being subjected to unfamiliar exercise all the way to trained athletes.
And soreness itself is somewhat difficult to study. Researchers can measure things such as strength, range of motion and biochemical markers, but eventually somebody still has to answer the very scientific question: āOkay… but how sore are you?ā That makes soreness partly subjective, meaning its not exactly measurable.
The evidence base isn’t enormous either. Even the newer 2025 meta-analysis contained only 465 participants across 15 studies. So there is room for larger, high-quality studies with longer follow ups.
But importantly, āmore research would be niceā doesn’t mean we currently have no answer.
Several reviews across many years have repeatedly landed in roughly the same place, giving about the same answer: stretching doesn’t appear to make a meaningful difference to delayed muscle soreness.
What Does This Mean In Real Life?
If stretching after your workout is part of your established routine and you enjoy just simply doing it, there isn’t an indication to just quit doing so or throwing your equipment away. Keep going purely for the benefit of relaxation or perceived improvement.
However I would also focus on adjusting the expectations from “Hey, this what will help” to “Hey, I enjoy this so I will keep doing so”.
Stretching is still useful for aspects such as flexibility or mobility depending on how and why you’re doing it. What it probably won’t do is reliably stop soreness from turning up the next day.
And if you’re already sore? A gentle stretch might still feel nice. Even though it may not speed up recovery or make the soreness vanish, it doesn’t have to.
š³ļø š Rabbit Hole: Are your sore muscles full of lactic acid?
There are actually two interesting rabbit holes here.
First: most of us have probably heard that lactic acid is what makes our muscles sore after a hard workout. As with many exercise-facts, this is another one that was repeated to such a degree, that people automatically assume it as fact.
Except… it isnāt really true. Researchers used to think that the accumulation of lactate in the muscles was responsible for the all too familiar post-workout soreness. The problem, however, is that lactate levels drop again far too quickly to explain soreness that usually peaks 24ā72 hours later.
Instead, delayed-onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, seems to have much more to do with the stress placed on muscle tissue during unfamiliar or intense exercise, followed by inflammatory responses and sensitisation of pain receptors.
And then thereās the stretching part. Scientists have actually been asking whether stretching prevents muscle soreness for more than 20 years. A systematic review from 2002 already found that stretching before or after exercise made barely any difference at all (!) around 0.9 mm on a 100 mm soreness scale after 24 hours.
Which is… basically nothing when you think about it for a few seconds.
And weirdly enough, more than two decades later, the overall conclusion still hasnāt changed much. Newer reviews continue to find that stretching does not meaningfully reduce delayed muscle soreness, even though the evidence base itself is still relatively small and imperfect.
So two myths and one rabbit hole: Lactic acid probably isnāt causing your post workout soreness, and stretching probably isnāt really preventing it either.
EVIDENCE VERDICT
Fairly Convincing- just no gigantic evidence base
How convincing is the evidence?
āāāāā
Does it change what we should do?
Probably not dramatically. A positive aspect is that the found evidence is fairly consistent. Stretching is not harmful when performed appropriately, and if you enjoy it, there’s no reason for you to stop just because the outcome isn’t to prevent soreness.
There are individual studies coming to the conclusion that there are benefits that exist, and eventually these could actually lead to a reduction in soreness. But as for right now, high-quality reviews don’t show a meaningful reduction in overall muscle soreness.
The Bottom Line
If you’re stretching after exercise because it feels good, helps your flexibility or is simply part of your routine: Keep going!
If the only reason is to eradicate soreness: Sorry, maybe try something else.
Current evidence doesn’t tell us that stretching is superior to ordinary recovery such as just couching it out. Good thing is, your muscles will definitely recover. Sad thing.. you will probably want to not take the stairs for the next few days.
References & Sources
View the studies behind this article
- Zhang, Pei et al.
Effects of post-exercise stretching versus no stretching on lower limb muscle recovery and performance: a meta-analysis
Frontiers in physiology (2025)
[Read the Study] - Afonso, JosƩ et al.
The Effectiveness of Post-exercise Stretching in Short-Term and Delayed Recovery of Strength, Range of Motion and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.
Frontiers in physiology (2021)
[Read the Study] - Dupuy, Olivier et al.
An Evidence-Based Approach for Choosing Post-exercise Recovery Techniques to Reduce Markers of Muscle Damage, Soreness, Fatigue, and Inflammation: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis
Frontiers in physiology (2018)
[Read the Study] - Qamar, Muhammad M et al.
Effects of active isolated stretching on exercise-induced muscle damage in untrained subjects: a randomized controlled trial
Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association
[Read the Study] - Di Lorenzo, Luigi et al
Advances in Non-Pharmacological Strategies for DOMS: A Scoping and Critical Review of Recent Evidence
Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology (2025)
[Read the Study] - Herbert, Rob D, and Michael Gabriel
Effects of stretching before and after exercising on muscle soreness and risk of injury: systematic review
BMJ (Clinical research ed.) (2002)
[Read the Study]
Written by A Dose of Proof
Health research can be fascinating ā but the way itās written often makes it much harder to understand than it needs to be.
A Dose of Proof is the voice behind After the Abstract, translating health research into clear, evidence-focused explanations that look beyond the headline ā including what a study found, what it didnāt prove, and whether the results actually matter.
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