Hips and hamstrings

[bl_]

Hi people, this is my first post here. (Just starting with Kit's pancake series after doing other types of stretching without getting much results.)

I have a situation with my hips and hamstrings that leaves me puzzled:

Bending over with straight legs, legs together, my maximum range is flat hand on the floor with the heel of the hand almost touching the ground. However, some days I'm so tight that I can only reach halfway down my calves with my fingertips. Which means about 40 centimeters less range, considering that the heel of my hand is up by the knee!

It feels like the tightness is in my hamstrings, to the point where they could be contributing to lower back pain. While hamstring limbering eventually would get me to my end range, it took a lot of work.

Then a while ago I tried doing hip flexor stretches first, and after just a little hip stretching, I could get to my end range in the forward bend. And the effect is immediate. For example this morning, again not even able to touch my ankles, I tried the Chinese hip grinder. One little set of five seconds on each hip, and bam! I could get my almost my whole palm on the ground in the forward bend. It's like magic.

How can this be? I thought - and it still feels like - my hamstrings are limiting my compression, not the hip flexors. (My top priority right now is getting enough straddle compression to perform a press to handstand.) How can the hip flexors be hindering my compression? I thought that tightness here would limit my ability to open my hip, not close it. I might expect some impact, but not this dramatic. The fact remains, a little hip stretching improves my compression immediately, releases hamstring tightness and alleviates hamstring DOMS and back pain. Has anybody else had similar experiences?

Cheers,

Børge

[Rik]

Probably relevant.

[AndeL]

I speculate reciprocal inhibition type effects may be at play here.

Could you try this, as I am curious?

-Single leg seated hamstring stretch, bent to straight.

-Without hitting stretch reflex, contract quads/hipflexors (hf) into your free hand or chest (say 5 sec), then immediately straighten leg more.

-Repeat a few times, easing into it, see if this helps you get towards end ROM/provides a similar effect to your hip grinder/hf stretch combo.

-The idea is therefore, activate quads and hf, immediately after increase hamstring ROM and also try to keep quads/hf active somewhat.

This may illustrate the idea, from

.

[bl_]

Thanks for the input.

AndrewL, I'm not sure I'm familiar with the stretch you're referring to. Could you link to an example, please?

161803398874989, interesting stuff, I actually think I got a bit more external rotation in my tightest hip after doing some planks. Never heard about this before, does anyone else have any experience with this connection between core activation and hip flexibility?

[Kit_L]

Yes, it's a "core" concept here—no point in increasing any ROM if you don't have the strength to support it is another way of expressing the same concept.

We have free YT clips that explores bent-to-straight hamstring stretching; these are just two:

[bl_]

Thanks a lot, Kit

[Kit_L]

Børge,

This phenomenon you report is reasonably well understood, at least here. For me personally, loosening the HFs was THE key to eliminating a lifetime of low back pain, the subject of my first book. And many others using our unique HF stretches have found the same effect, or a whole-body loosening effect, too. This is just the beginning, though. (An aside: as soon as I can shoot in my new studio, I will be posting a new solo and partner HF stretch.)

And then once that tension has settled, it's time to move on to really working the hamstrings.

Bent-to-straight leg leg stretching is one of the hallmarks of our work; no one else recommended it before we did, as far as I know. It works. It also is a lot less painful that stretching the hamstrings with the knees straight!