| Jake pulled his hamstring a few years back, lunging during a soccer match and it hasn't been the same since. While sitting, he feels an achy tenderness right at the "sits bone" and he's stiff when he first gets out of a chair. With running he has good and bad days, but his left side is never as fluid as it used to be. If you suffer from chronic hamstring problems, you are not alone. But there's hope. Find out why you are so tight and what you can do about it: Scar tissue: Muscle pulls or strains are micro-tears to the muscle fiber or tendons. Once you have a micro-tear in the muscle, flexibility can be lost because of scarring. Blood supply to the muscle is also compromised. And a scar does not move as well as the surrounding muscle fibers. What to do: It's important to get that mobility back, and ASTYM might be your best bet. Check out ASTYM on our website. Nerve tension: Scar tissue can interfere with the mobility of the sciatic nerve as it runs down the back of the leg. When scar tissue compresses and irritates the nerve, the hamstring muscle it innervates becomes tense. Stretching is the wrong thing to do when a nerve is irritable; it will make things worse. In a study of athletes suffering repetitive hamstring pulls, 57% had abnormal nerve tension compared with 0% of the people with no history of hamstring pulls. Do you have nerve tension that makes your hamstring tight?
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| Watch this video to test it yourself |
What to do: Have neural tension evaluated and treated by your PT. You can learn ways to get nerves moving better which will allow the hamstring to relax. Ahh. Muscle Imbalance: When your hamstrings feel tight, they might be overworking because your gluteal muscles are turned off or weak. Hamstrings have two functions - they extend the hip and bend the knee. When the primary hip extensors (buttock muscles) are shut down, the hamstrings often take over. "Sitting disease" can make the glutes ever weaker and cause the hamstrings to help out more than they should. For ways to combat sitting disease, click here. What to do: You can test your ability to fire the glutes over the hamstrings with the following test:
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| Watch Video on how to test your Glutes vs. Hamstrings |
If you failed this test, learn how to fire your glutes - read more here. If you still can't get those glutes turned on, you may need help. There are lots of tools we have to get glutes to fire, and we might also use dry needling to get the hamstrings to quiet down a bit. Back problems: A history of lower back problems makes hamstring tightness more likely. Either nerve tightness or hip weakness from a back injury can predispose you to hamstring problems long after your back feels better. Addressing the underlying issues of either neural tension, or muscle imbalance can help prevent another back injury and finally get your hamstring feeling better again. A Weak Core: If your core is weak, your pelvis falls forward and the hamstrings lengthen (like the picture on the right). Though the muscle is longer than normal, it actually feels tight. Strengthening the abdominal muscles may relax the hamstrings by keeping  your pelvis in a more neutral position (see picture on the left). To really figure out where you are tightest and where you are weakest, you need an expert. The solution is in the details. An SFMA screen is designed to find your weakest link. There are many possible reasons for chronic hamstring tightness. Therapists at ALTA do the detective work it takes to come up with a successful plan for you. Give us a call today. |
