Inadequate flexibility is a contributing factor to muscle injury,
especially with respect to the hamstring muscle group.
Simple therapeutic regimens capable of increasing hamstring
flexibility may reduce the injury potential of athletes with
below-average hamstring flexibility or history of injury. This
study compared 30 seconds of static stretching with 20 minutes
of heat application on hamstring flexibility. A secondary
purpose was to determine the relationship between the subject’s
attitude toward each treatment and the efficacy of treatment.
Thirty undergraduate student athletes who were current
members of a Midwestern collegiate football team participated
in a 2 (treatment: heat vs. stretching) by 2 (counterbalanced
order: heat first vs. stretching first)
repeated-measures design. Results indicated that significant
benefits to increase hamstring flexibility could be gained by
using moist heat packs in comparison with static stretching
despite a perceived attitudinal bias in favor of stretching.
These findings may have implications for orthopedic fitness
as well as injury prevention for an athlete with prior hamstring
injury or inadequate flexibility.