A surprising number of problems arise from tight hamstrings and, given the frequency of knee injuries among athletes and dancers, it's obvious that the methods used to keep them free could be better. This article presents a more effective way to free your hamstrings, improve your performance, and avoid injury. A Look at Your Hamstrings
[SIZE=+1] The hamstrings are the muscles that run from behind and below your knees up the backs of your thighs to your "sitbones". Soft tissue injuries, knee pain, torn menisci (the cartilage pads in your knees that cushion the bones), chondromalacia patelli (painful wearing of the cartilage behind the kneecaps), and poor posture often come from tight hamstrings. Tight hamstrings can prevent you from reaching full leg extension or from bending over completely. If you can't touch your toes or if you feel more comfortable slouching than sitting up straight, your hamstrings are probably tight.
There are actually three hamstring muscles on the back of each thigh, two on the inside and one on the outside. They do several things. In addition to bending the knees, they help control the alternate forward-and-backward movements of walking and stability against twisting forces at the knee when you turn a corner or roller skate. They also position the menisci in the knees by means of fibers (of the biceps femoris) that pass into the knee joint.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]As you can see, hamstring tension has far-reaching effects on movement, balance, and the health of joints.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]Why Stretching Doesn't Work for Long[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]What Works Better[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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 coordination patterns 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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]The following coordination pattern, developed by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of somatic education, will show you. You may want to save this page so that you can try it on your own. Have someone read the instructions to you and follow along.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]http://www.somatics.com/pdf/somagic,_hamstrings.pdf
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1] The hamstrings are the muscles that run from behind and below your knees up the backs of your thighs to your "sitbones". Soft tissue injuries, knee pain, torn menisci (the cartilage pads in your knees that cushion the bones), chondromalacia patelli (painful wearing of the cartilage behind the kneecaps), and poor posture often come from tight hamstrings. Tight hamstrings can prevent you from reaching full leg extension or from bending over completely. If you can't touch your toes or if you feel more comfortable slouching than sitting up straight, your hamstrings are probably tight.
There are actually three hamstring muscles on the back of each thigh, two on the inside and one on the outside. They do several things. In addition to bending the knees, they help control the alternate forward-and-backward movements of walking and stability against twisting forces at the knee when you turn a corner or roller skate. They also position the menisci in the knees by means of fibers (of the biceps femoris) that pass into the knee joint.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]As you can see, hamstring tension has far-reaching effects on movement, balance, and the health of joints.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]Why Stretching Doesn't Work for Long[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]What Works Better[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]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 coordination patterns 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.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]The following coordination pattern, developed by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of somatic education, will show you. You may want to save this page so that you can try it on your own. Have someone read the instructions to you and follow along.
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]http://www.somatics.com/pdf/somagic,_hamstrings.pdf
[/SIZE]
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