If we are talking about more likely to injure yourself we are looking at percentages of a small percentage to begin with. Imagine all the times you ever played basketball... if you are me, it hasn't been a lot, but we will call it 100 times. Now, according to some research, those people with the highest and lowest flexibility are 2.2-2.4 times as likely to get injured. This would still only translate to 2 games of basketball out of 100 where I might twist my ankle. Not bad odds, perhaps.

Going onto an activity that I have far more experience with, lifting. In the more than 16 years I have been in the gym I can count the number of actual injuries from lifting on one hand. So... um, I hate math. We will assume that I lift on the average of 3 days a week (it is more than that) and that I am in the gym 45 weeks a year (again, more than that) and you get some number that looks like (3x45) (x16) = 2160 days in the gym... and five injuries. Roughly every 432 trips to the gym I'll get injured. Double that and I'll get injured once every 216 trips... or about every 72 weeks. Now, we are NOT talking life or death here. Of course these numbers are just to give you an example of how small this "double the incidence" factor is.

Most people do not need to be extremely flexible. I kinda keep on track by making sure I can touch my fingers to the floor if I'm leaning over to touch my toes. I could push that and figure out how to do the splits, but that isn't necessary. I could also figure out how to put my legs behind my head, but that would not do anyone any good unless I was interested in viewing my proctology exam first hand. So if we maintain a reasonable amount of flexibility overall, we stand the greatest chance of being healthy.