By Michael Scholtz, M.A., Best Life fitness expert

Most fitness experts and avid exercisers have long considered stretching an essential part of a well-rounded workout program. But believe it or not, evidence about what stretching can or can’t do for you is surprisingly mixed. In fact, one recent study suggests that stretching can't prevent soreness. So, should you take the time to stretch? Absolutely! After all, look at all that stretching can do for you.

STRETCHING CAN...

Help prevent injuries. Stretching is just one of several factors at play when it comes to injuries. For instance, acute injuries like sprains or torn ligaments are often caused by outside forces like a collision. But some are due to slips or a loss of balance. A combination of strengthening, balance training and flexibility exercises may reduce the chances of suffering these types of injuries.

Keep muscles loose. Stress on the muscles, like exercise or poor posture, can cause muscle tightness, which in turn, can affect your workouts (you might improperly adjust your form to compensate, for example) and worsen your posture. It’s a vicious cycle that can result in injury unless you stretch, which will help lengthen and loosen up the muscles.

Improve circulation. Stretching causes a gentle contract-relax action in the muscle that results in an increase in blood flow. This can speed recovery from workouts or minor injuries, and is especially helpful for muscles that are very tight, where blood flow may be restricted.

Reduce stress. Stress can be emotional or physical. Obviously, physical stress can strain your muscles, but so can emotional stress. Feelings like anxiety or anger can cause you to contract your muscles without even realizing it. Think about how your shoulders end up around your ears after a stressful commute in your car. The tension creeps into your back and neck and causes them to ache. Stretching can help relax the grip of tense muscles.

Give you an energy boost. This benefit is likely a result of the improvement in circulation mentioned above. Circulating blood delivers oxygen to your muscles and brain, making you feel more awake and alert.

Improve your range of motion. Stretching tight muscles will allow your joints to move more easily through their natural range of motion, making your workouts more effective and helping you prevent overuse injuries.

STRETCHING CAN'T…

Keep you from feeling sore. A recent study from experts at the University of Sydney in Australia found that stretching had little to no effect on preventing soreness. That’s probably because the primary role of stretching is to improve your range of motion, and exercising beyond your normal range of motion is not the cause of typical muscle soreness. Indeed, you can experience soreness even when your workouts don’t push you outside your normal range of motion.

So what does cause that achy, throbbing feeling in your muscles after a sweat session? One of the most widely accepted theories is that new or intense exercise can cause microscopic tears in the muscle fiber. Therefore, it's best to skip the hard workouts when soreness is at it's peak. The only known treatment for soreness is time; the symptoms will typically resolve on their own in a few days. In the meantime, there are few tricks you can use to reduce the sensation, at least temporarily, including icing the area for 10 to 15 minutes, using light massage, doing light exercise, and taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications like ibuprofen. And, though it won't alleviate soreness, many people think that lightly stretching a sore muscle just plain feels good!

Prevent injuries from overdoing it. Having an improved range of motion is great for reducing your chances of developing chronic injuries like tendinitis, but it won’t help if you try to do too much too quickly. Even experienced exercisers who ramp up their workouts too rapidly are at risk.

If you’re looking to get more out of your routine, increase your aerobic workouts by only a few minutes and stick with that time for a week or so before you up your time again. As for strength training, if you’re adding weights, try to use the smallest available increase (no more than 5 to 10 percent increments at a time).

The bottomline: Flexibility is not a cure-all when it comes to soreness or injuries, but it’s not a stretch to say it has some amazing benefits!