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Recent studies have shown that stretching immediately after exercise is the single best way to prevent injury and prolong your level of activity, especially for older individuals. The general belief is that stretching prior to exercise is beneficial to both improving performance and reducing the chances of injury. However, professional athletes in any sport will testify against the accuracy of this claim. While warming up is required to produce any benefits of pre-exercise stretching, more benefits occur with post-exercise stretching along with reduced chances for injury.

Flexibility is an asset valuable to both weekend athletes and elite athletes alike. Flexible people have a greater range of motion, which improves performance and reduces injuries, but you can only become more flexible when you are stretching at or close to the limit of your range of motion. Think for a moment how you feel in the morning when you wake up. You're stiff and if you're like most people you spend no time attempting a stretch, but get ready and go to work. At the end of they day you may be tired, but the stiffness is gone without any conscious effort on your part and any exercise you attempt at this point invariably leads to better results.

Stretching before running does not improve flexibility because your muscles are not warmed up. Instead, they are tight and inflexible. Instead of holding onto the belief that the point of stretching is to loosen your muscles up, consider the practices of other athletes. Elite athletes, especially Olympic-caliber runners, do not step onto the track and stretch before their event. They go for an easy run to loosen up their muscles before doing their stretches. These runs lack the effort of their training runs because they're merely completed to increase blood circulation and to raise their core body temperature to a level where they can get their muscles to their optimal flexibility before the race. After the race, they spend an exponentially longer time completing their stretches not only because they're taking precautions not to place further strain on them, but to lengthen them in order to gain flexibility for future training sessions and races. This activity reduces the amount of destructive lactic acid buildup by diffusing it over a larger area of muscle instead of leaving it to build up in a certain area of muscle tissue or a joint.

While a brief warm-up followed by basic stretches is ideal for normal athletes and weekend warriors, avoiding cool down stretches can be detrimental. In order to avoid micro-tears, inflammation and pain, taking a few extra minutes to stretch after your exercise will ensure that the time you spent will be an asset instead of a cause for recovery.

Sources - Runners World

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