Free Your Hamstrings,
Improve your Performance
-- and Save Your Knees

Tight hamstrings contribute to swayback by pulling the knees behind the body's vertical centerline (i.e., locking the knees). The whole body sways forward, accentuating the spinal curves. If the outer hamstrings are tighter than the inner ones, the lower leg rotates toe-outward. This twist in the knee joint contributes to knee pain, to knee injuries, and to ungainly movement. Finally, when standing, bent knees trigger tension in the muscles on the front of the thigh, the quadriceps muscles, to prevent your knees from buckling. If you keep your knees bent all the time, the patella, or kneecap, which is embedded in the tendon of the quadriceps muscles, continuously grinds against the front surface of the knee joint and may become irritated.

As you can see, hamstring tension has far-reaching effects on movement, balance, and the health of joints.

Knowing all this, athletes and dancers attempt to stretch their hamstrings. "Attempt" is the correct word because stretching produces only limited and temporary effects, which is one reason why so many athletes (and dancers) suffer pulled hamstrings and knee injuries.

As anyone who has had someone stretch their hamstrings for them knows, forcible stretching is also usually a painful ordeal. In addition, stretching the hamstrings disrupts their natural coordination with the quadriceps muscles, which is why ones legs feel shaky after stretching the hamstrings.

Fortunately, there is a more effective way to manage hamstring tension than by stretching. To understand how it works, one must first recognize that hamstrings that need stretching are usually holding tension -- that is, they are actively contracting. In that case, the person is holding them tense by habit, unconsciously. Oddly enough, if one tries to relax them, one is likely to find that one cannot; one may then assume that the muscles are completely relaxed and need stretching. You may not realize that those muscles are contracting "on automatic" due to postural habits stored in your central nervous system. Any attempt to stretch them simply re-triggers the impulse to re-contract them to restore the sense of what is "familiar". That is why hamstrings (and other muscles) tighten up again so soon after stretching or massage. Better results come by changing the person's "set-point" -- their sense of what "relaxed" is.

To change the set-point requires more than stretching or massaging; it requires a learning process that affects the brain, which controls the muscular system. Such a learning process is referred to in some circles as "somatic education". Somatic education systematically uses special somatic learning exercises to improve awareness and control the tension of the muscular system. Significant results come relatively quickly, and when they do, the benefits are second nature and require no special attention in daily life.

The following somatic exercise, developed by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of somatic education, will show you. Have someone read the instructions to you.

Bookmark this page on Delicious.

1. Sit on the floor with one leg bent and dropped to the side. Its sole rests against the inside of your other leg, which is straight.
2. Draw your straight leg up enough to permit you to grasp your foot with both hands; your finger tips meet at your sole. Get a firm grip, and you are ready to begin.
3. Holding your foot firmly, gently push with your leg, so that your arm and shoulder stretch long. Hang your head forward. Work gently to the edge of your flexibility.
4. Now, gradually relax your push, let your knee bend, and take up the slack by drawing your leg up with your hands. It's a kind of "moving isometric" exercise.
5. Now, with your leg, push again, maintaining some pull with your hands. Go back and forth within your comfort zone.

Each position contributes to greater awareness and control.

If you can't assume the working position shown, your back is too tight and you need to learn to relax your back. CLICK to get a simplified version of an exercise to free your back or get the Cat Stretch program, a general program for movement health.

Regardless of how long you may have had tight hamstrings or how tight they are, you will feel some improvement each time you do it -- until you are naturally loose.

Freeing your hamstrings this way can prevent soft-tissue injuries and preserve joint integrity. Your hamstrings will be stronger because, being relaxed, they will not be partially fatigued all the time. You will be able to run or walk faster and your knees will be more stable. Runners may find this benefit of particular interest.