This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 2:18 am and is filed under Bad Backs, Stretching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Part 1 of 10 
There are many different ways to stretch the hamstrings and the majority of them are very effective. The one that I am going to show you today helps a little more directly with the back as it helps to stretch out the whole of the rear of the leg, pin-pointing where the tight areas are. A tight hamstring will pull on your pelvis when you stand; this in turn causes the extra strain in your back. Before you start, here are some tips to stretching that you need to learn first.
1. Pain should never be a part of stretching.
2. Use a scale of 1-10: 1 being nothing and 10 being agony. You need to stretch to a 6 or 7. This should feel as if it is pulling right in the middle of the muscle and nowhere near your bones. It should feel like a strong pull and not painful or sharp.
3. When taking your body into any stretch, once you have done it, just hold it there. Do not force it any further and definitely don’t bounce (By “bounce” I mean short regular movements trying to force your muscle to stretch further than it wants to. You can damage the muscle by doing this.)
4. Breathe! Your muscles won’t be able to relax properly if you are holding your breath. Use nice deep yoga-style breathing, take in a lung-full and let the air out nice and slowly right to the end.
5. It is better to get the technique correct than concerning yourself about how far you stretch. Bad technique could result in you receiving no benefits from the stretching or worse still an injury. And that is the kind of irony we don’t like
6. Try and do stretches first thing in the morning and last thing at night. The more you can do the better, but morning and evening is fine as a minimum.
Stretch 1
For this first stretch you will need to find yourself a step and maybe a rail to help with balance. Other than that you just need yourself. Stand on tip toes with your heels off the step. Slowly drop your heels down a bit, still off the step, so you feel a very small stretch in your calf muscle (back of the lower part of your leg). On the scale it should be around a 4-5, a small pull. For this next part you will need to hold onto the rail for balance, still on the step. Keeping your legs completely straight at the knee. Lean forward at the waist, keeping your upper body equally straight. You should only be bending at the hips . Keeping your heels below your toes you should start to feel a pull in your hamstrings. At the same time the pull in your calf muscles should increase.
Do not worry if you can’t feel a pull in the hamstrings straight away it will just mean that your calf muscles are more tight. As you slowly lean forwards you need to stop and hold that position when either your calf muscle or hamstring reaches a 6-7 ( a pull in the main section of the muscle - and remember BREATHE!). Now, how long should you hold this stretch? In the past anything from 10 to 20 seconds has been acceptable. However in my experience and results from some recent studies have proved that longer is better. In my opinion anything from 45 seconds to a minute is best.
So now your body should be in the position shown in the diagram (I have marked in red where you should feel the main stretch. Finally coming out of the stretch: do not stand upright but bend your knees first so that you release the legs. Then stand upright, doing this will help prevent any excess stress on the lower back itself.
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September 12th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
[...] I wrote about this sometime ago so here is the link. [...]
October 20th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
My hamstring has been problematic this year, I’ve pulled it 3 times playing 5 aside soccer. This is despite warming up. will the above exercises, put paid to this? How often should I do them, and for how long? And for how long prior to actually playing?