Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings! Part 2
In my initial post about not stretching your hamstrings I mentioned a few concepts to focus on for overall hamstring health. In my Part 1 of Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings I went over how important positioning and posture is, specifically relative to an anterior tilt. In this article I am going to address a couple other aspects regarding the hamstrings. Basically, I will try to educate why your hamstrings feel “tight” and better alternatives than stretching. The three I will be going over is neural tension, injury history, and eccentric strength (doesn’t apply too much to hamstring stretching, but is vital in hamstring health, plus I am obsessed with strength) and how they each affect the hamstrings.
I want to make it clear that the Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings Part 1 and Part 2 are strictly for athletes, as I understand that most of the population may truly have tight hamstrings due to the positions and postures they live in.
Neural Tension
As I mentioned in Part 1 rarely do athletes actually have tight and short hamstrings, but instead the issue is derived from different sources. We often forget about the nervous system and how they communicate with each other and how they communicate with muscle--neurodynamics. As I have mentioned before, the feeling of tightness is rarely the location of true problem. Nerves are all around the body, and when they get irritated for whatever reason it doesn’t feel very good--tingling sensation. When there is damage to the vertebral column or spinal cord it can cause a sense of “tightness” throughout the lower extremity mainly the hamstrings, which explains why the hamstrings feel “tight”. Nerves are also surrounded by bones, muscles and tissue which makes it easy for nerves to become entrapped and/or frozen.
When an athlete continues to stretch their hamstrings they will also stretch the nerve, which will only irritate it more. Nerves don’t have enough elastin to truly be stretched! The best example of this is the sciatic nerve and the slump stretch test. The slump stretch test will help determine if you have a form of neural tension instead of hamstring “tightness”.
Here is an example of a slump stretch test:
I tend to incorporate some nerve flossing techniques with my athletes that qualify for it. Nerve flossing needs to be done with care as it could also cause more irritation or even new neural tension.
Here is an example of a hamstring flossing technique I use at OPZ:
Injury History
This might seem obvious, but if you've had a hamstring injury in the past it is safe to say that you will never feel normal in that area again. Studies have shown that those with past hamstrings injuries are 2 to 6 times more likely to suffer another one (Prior et al., 2009). Prior hamstring injuries can cause a feeling of “tightness” because of the unwanted build up that occurs to the muscle, surrounding tissue or even the tendons. Over time I have become a bigger and bigger fan of manual therapy for multiple reasons, because it helps increase range of motion, improve muscle length and treat soft tissue issues--to name a few. Instead of stretching an area that probably doesn’t have a whole lot of room to stretch I would recommend using manual therapy techniques to release tension.
Eccentric Strength
Yes, I could just label this as Strength and move on, but Eccentric Strength is a more precise and correct term to use. If there is anything I can make clear, it's that strengthening your hamstrings is probably the single most important thing you can do to keep your hamstrings healthy. A hamstring injury usually occurs because there is an excessive stretch which leads to a strain. So why would we stretch our hamstrings more if that's how they get injured? Just words for thought.
If we want to actually increase any length of the hamstrings we should look to lengthen the fascicle length. Muscle fascicles are basically bundles of muscle fibers. Multiple muscle fascicles make up a muscle. Longer fascicles = Lower risk of hamstring injury. How do we do that? In order to increase muscle fascicle length we need constant lengthening of the muscle-tendon complex. The muscle-tendon complex can be defined as the connection between the muscle and tendons and how force is transmitted and their interaction with each other. This is why “Nordics” have shown to be effective in reducing the chance of a hamstring strain because of the eccentric component that is implemented. Now, we can’t just program an athlete Nordics if they don’t have a solid foundation of basic strength, as I see Nordic exercise as a high level exercise.
This is not the time to go into preventable hamstring mechanisms, but I have to mention one small concept about Nordics. Different Nordic exercises have different outcomes due to the anatomy of the hamstrings. If we want to increase fascicle length, an athlete should perform Nordics with a flexed hip and do so with full range of motion because of the high passive forces involved. All I’m trying to say is that we can’t just program a Nordic hamstring exercise and think we cured all hamstring issues.
Here is one of my athletes performing an impressive Nordic Hamstring Curl:
Here are three other reasons besides positioning and posture on why you should stop stretching your hamstrings. Again, before you start bending over to stretch your hamstrings think about if you are actually making things worse. There is a lot more on the strengthening aspect that I may get into in a later article, but for now please stop stretching your hamstrings.
References
Prior, M., Guerin, M., & Grimmer, K. (2009). An evidence-based approach to hamstring strain injury: a systematic review of the literature. Sports health, 1(2), 154–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1941738108324962
