Active Release Technique and hamstring extensibility (critically appraised topic)

Critically appraised topic synthesising the trial evidence for Active Release Technique (ART) on hamstring extensibility. The available studies, small and mostly in healthy people, support an acute, short-term increase in hamstring flexibility after a single ART session (graded level B), with head-to-head trials finding ART no better than, and sometimes inferior to, comparators such as PNF stretching or dynamic soft-tissue mobilisation. The evidence is for an immediate flexibility change in the healthy, not for treating a running injury, and does not show that ART does anything its generic soft-tissue comparators do not.