I occasionally suffer from lower back pain. From experience, tight hamstrings seem to be the cause. If I regularly stretch my hamstrings, I am without back problems. If I stop stretching, then, after a few months, I'll suddenly develop severe back pain. It's happened 3 times already, so I'm seeing a pattern.
So I guess my point is: stretching can help in other areas; it just may not help you improve one specific aspect of your performance. It can keep you injury-free.
The basic point made is that pre-exercise stretching decreases power and may decrease stability. Sports scientists have been finding this in a number of studies for some time.
Post-exercise stretching, or regular therapeutic stretching, is not what they're talking about.
Which is what the GP meant: the title is misleading. Which is more important than you might think, because later those titles end up inside the folk knowledge.
I think that the title is only somewhat misleading. When I think of "stretching" I think of the classical static stretching which is increasingly coming under fire.
I grew up calling dynamic stretching "warm ups".
I think this is probably true for most people, but I admit that it may depend a lot on the fitness environment one grew up in.
The article actually means static stretching. I grew up knowing the difference and used dynamic stretching[1] pre-explosive events and static stretching at off-times.
[1] Fire hydrants, Scorpions, Iron Crosses, Skipping, etc.
Your hamstrings are too short and pull on your lower back. To fix short muscles stretching is great. If your muscles aren't already short then stretching isn't very useful.
(Post-workout stretching can help prevent your muscles from ever becoming short)
I occasionally suffer from lower back pain. From experience, tight hamstrings seem to be the cause. If I regularly stretch my hamstrings, I am without back problems. If I stop stretching, then, after a few months, I'll suddenly develop severe back pain. It's happened 3 times already, so I'm seeing a pattern.
So I guess my point is: stretching can help in other areas; it just may not help you improve one specific aspect of your performance. It can keep you injury-free.