Do you and your Hamstrings have a long and
troubled relationship?
Do you feel your lower back silently curse you when you
bend over to pick something up and your unwilling Hamstrings just won’t let you
go any further – so your back is left to carry the burden?
Does the thought of
touching your toes seem absurdly out of the question?
And attempting to lift
both your legs straight up to a perpendicular 90 degrees without bending your
knees seem beyond insane?
Have you answered YES to all of these questions??
Well, then welcome to the short Hamstrings club!
So, why and what exactly has
caused this gold member status to be so generously bestowed upon you?? Well, it
could be due to a variety of different reasons, but for now I’m going to look
at 2 main theories.
The first theory I would like to call ‘the
use it or lose it principle’. By this I mean what we do with our bodies most of
the time far trumps and massively outweighs what we try and do with our bodies
some of the time. So what exactly do I mean by this?
Your collective group of
Hamstrings basically consists of three individual muscles biceps femoris,
semitendinosus, and semimembranosus that perform different functions, the main
one being bending your knee. And if you really start thinking about how often
you bend your knees you actually start to feel sorry for those poor Hamstrings.
But the important factor to consider is not only how often you bend your knees
but the length of time you do this for. Yes, drum roll please, the culprit =
sitting for long periods of time! And now enter those long 8-10 hour working
days being chair-bound and chained to a desk, basically resulting in your
Hamstrings being contracted (due to your knees being constantly bent) for the bulk of your day, and
then you get into your car and take on that long traffic filled drive home, and
guess what, more knee bending, then you get home on flop onto the couch, oh no
, knees are flexed again, so I’m sure you’re starting to see the trend here.
And then we spend 40-90 minutes in the gym trying to lengthen and stretch out
our Hamstrings and actually expect them to comply? Well, unfortunately that’s
not going to happen. You can’t contract them all day long and expect them to
get longer. And you know what the ironic thing is about the whole story?
Your
body actually thinks it’s helping you by shortening your Hamstrings for you,
how crazy does that sound? Yes, the body is a complex yet magnificent thing.
Basically when you spend countless days and hours on end in a particular
position, with particular muscles in a contracted, and therefore shortened
state (contracted Hamstrings in a seated position) your sarcomeres (which are
the basic contractile units of your muscles) actually change at a cellular
level in a way that makes it easier for you to do more of what you are already
doing (therefore, remain seated).
So what exactly is the solution here? Well,
basically to move around with more normal Hamstring length more frequently.
It’s your job and sole duty to remind your sarcomeres at what length they
should actually be at, to take full advantage of natural movement more
frequently (like running, walking, bending etc.). So get up, stretch out, and
move around – and do this A LOT more than you are currently doing it!
The next theory is called the ‘Emergency
brake theory’. So we’ve all done this before, we put our foot flat on the
petrol, put pedal to the metal and we’re just not going anywhere, only to
realize we’ve forgotten to release our emergency brake, oops! So, how exactly
does this principle apply to your Hamstrings? Your ability to stretch is
actually determined by your nervous system’s tolerance to that range.
This
basically means that it is your Nervous system that gives you that firm end
range when you’re stretching a particular part of your body and it just won’t
go any further. So why exactly does this happen?
Well, in simple terms it’s
your body pulling up its’ emergency brake. In terms of the Hamstrings acting as
the emergency brake, this can either be due to the range you are moving into
feels unfamiliar, loss of intrinsic support from the deeper layers of
musculature and fascia, and various compensatory patterns have determined that
certain parts of the body (A.K.A the
Hamstrings) need to function as the emergency brake due to other parts or
muscles not being ready or able to do their job, and therefore the
Hamstrings
are at the ready to jump in and save the day – the Nervous system therefore
makes a conscious decision to pull up the emergency brake as a sort of
protection mechanism.
The most important rule to apply here is what I like to
call the Goldilocks principle – not too much, not too little but just the right
amounts!
Don’t just force yourself into a forward fold with the pure
determination to touch your toes RIGHT NOW, because you will be stopped right
in your tracks. Work into it, ease into it, remind them they need to be
lengthened, and do so OFTEN!
Soon it will be happy days in Hamstring land!
By:
Bianca Bunge.
