Should you stretch before, or after a match?

There is a common misconception regarding stretching and preparing yourself to play a match.  The misconception is that static stretching is warming up, and a secondary misconception is that static stretching right before you go on court has any positive benefit to you whatsoever.

First lets discuss what static stretching actually does to your body when you engage in the activity.  When you do static stretches, the effect on your ligaments, tendons, and muscles is much like what happens to a rubber band when you stretch them.  Once the stretch is released, your muscles, ligaments, and tendons react exactly like the rubber band, by getting shorter, which is why immediately after static stretching you are LESS loose than you were prior to the stretch.  Unlike a rubber band, your muscles, ligaments and tendons do not then instantly return to their original size.

So, if you static stretch right before a match, physiologically you are actually making yourself tighter.  Certainly this is not what you want to achieve in order to get ready for your match.

Secondly, the activity of static stretching does not constitute a warm-up in any shape or form.  A proper warm-up will not only get your heart rate up slowly to prepare you for the upcoming physical activity, it will also get your muscles, ligaments and tendons LOOSER for the identical goal.

The key to this type of warm-up is low impact activities like jogging, shuffling, and skipping.  Also important in this process is dynamic stretching.  Dynamic stretching consists of activities that engage your muscles ligaments and tendons constant movements. Check out he link below to see Novak Djokovic doing a dynamic stretching routine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VWtVQmJTXk     

So dynamically stretch before your match in order to warm-up.  Eliminate the static stretching before your matches.  Save the static stretching for after your matches have ended.  The benefits of static stretching are not immediate, but will show up over time, as you will become more flexible.  Static stretching workouts both after matches and as a daily routine are the best way to prevent injuries in the long term.