Butt Exercises - Butt Tips - Butt Articles - Butt Books

Hamstrings Articles Home

Hamstrings Articles Home

* Hamstring Training Tips

Are your hamstrings hindering your overall leg development, strength, and leg balance? Did you know that you can increase your squat up to 25% just by developing your hamstrings with proper hamstring training?

The truth is that many people don't have the slightest clue how to properly train their hamstrings for development, growth, or strength. It's time to break out of the norm, push the sissy exercises aside and get to some real hamstring training.

If you are like most lifters there's a good chance that you have been not giving your hamstrings the full attention they need. Hamstrings seem to be one of the most neglected muscle groups and this can be for many reasons:

Out of sight out of mind

Intimidation

Failure to train a weak muscle group

Didn't see any progress after 2 hamstring training sessions

read more here

* Hamstrings, Stretch and Strengthen

The hamstrings are a muscle group consisting of three muscles, the semitendinosus, semimbranosus, and biceps femorus muscles. Tight hamstrings cause difficulty in touching your toes, and this can lead to problems in the lower back. The practice of yoga offers wonderful ways to stretch your hamstrings, but it is also possible to overstretch the hamstrings muscles.

The best way to prevent overstretching the hamstrings is by also practicing asanas that strengthen the hamstrings. There are many yoga programs, such as the ashtanga series, that incorporate elements of both stretching and strengthening into the series. But for those who are practicing on their own at home, or for yoga teachers who make their own lessons, it is important to know which asanas stretch and which strengthen the hamstring muscle group.

There are some asanas that mildly stretch the hamstrings, such as adho mukha svanasana (downward dog), and prasarita padottanasana (wide-legged forward bend). Many people will not feel their hamstrings in adho mukha svanasana, and this is a nice test for yourself or your students to see how tight the hamstrings are. Uttanasana (standing forward bend) is another great stretch for the hamstrings, and teachers can check their students’ hamstrings easily in uttanasana as well.

read more here

* Yoga: Firm Your Quads and Release Your Hamstrings

Those yoga practitioners with tense hamstrings are the ones most likely to tense up in poses meant to release the hams and they then lose the benefit of the pose. Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend) is a pose where to experience a relaxing stretch in your back, neck and legs, you must release the hamstrings.

Uttanasana is often used as a relaxing break after standing poses or as a rest during an intense vinyasa sequence. When performing the Standing Forward Bend, it is best to stretch the hamstrings on the back of your thighs and contract the quadriceps on the front of your thighs. In Uttanasana, positioning is important to allow the hamstrings to lengthen and relax into the stretch as opposed to holding on tightly and contracting.

To appreciate how your hamstrings work in Uttanasana, it is important to understand the three distinct forms of muscle contraction. In an isometric contraction, the muscle does not change length; a concentric contraction makes the muscle shorter; and an eccentric contraction lengthens the muscle.

If you start in Uttanasana with your knees straight and your pelvis tilted forward so that your head and spine are moving towards the floor, as you come up out of the pose, the hamstrings contract and pull down the sitting bones. The pelvis will then move upright and the upper body aligns with the legs. The hamstrings have performed a concentric, or shortening, contraction.

read more here

* The role of hamstrings

Lower back pain is most commonly from spinal nerve root L5 irritation followed by the S1 nerve root. Both nerve roots are strongly represented in the buttock muscle (gluteus maximus: predominant S1) and the inner thigh muscle (adductor magnus: the lower part L5, S1), hamstring muscles (L5 and S1), gluteus medius (predominant L5) and tensor fascia lata (predominant L5).
There are two parts tto the long hamstring muscles, the outer part (has one lateral muscle) and the inner part has (two medial) muscles. There is also another muscle known as the short hamstring muscle. The long hamstring muscles arise from the pelvic bone area known as the ischial tuberosity (this bone is under the buttock muscle and we place pressure on this bone when we sit). Thus the long hamstring muscles come from above the hip. They end (insert) on the leg bones. The short hamstring muscle arises from below the hip from the thigh bone. The long hamstring muscles receive their nerve supply through the sciatic nerve whereas the short hamstring muscle is supplied by the common peroneal nerve.

Whenever a muscle is tight, you must always consider the balance in strength between the muscles on opposite sides of the joint. In the case with the hamstrings, they act from behind to straighten the hip joint (extend) and bend the knee joint (flex). So the strength of the muscles in the front of the hip that bend the hip and thigh up (flex) and the muscles in the front of the knee that will straighten the knee (extend) are important to balance the action of the hamstrings.
Therefore, if the muscles that straighten the hip joint (extensors) are weak, the muscles that bend the hip and thigh upward (flexors) will be automatically stronger. This itself will make the hip extensors (gluteus maximus, adductor magnus) weaker since they will now be stretched beyond their optimal length.

Hamstring muscles do have an effect on straightening the hip, provided the knee is straight. However, when we are sitting down, the hamstring muscles do not have much effect on straightening the hip (extension). The action of the hamstrings will therefore be most prominent for bending the knee. The sitting position with knees bent thus puts the hamstring muscles to become short and tight behind the knee.

The sitting position also puts the rectus femoris and tensor fascia lata muscle at the front of the knee to be stretched across the knee. Since these muscles straighten the knee, they will be stretched beyond optimal length when the knee is in a bent position such as in sitting. This stretch effect is made worse since both these muscles are already shortened when the person sits since these two muscles are responsible for bending the hip also.

The setting for the tightness of the hamstrings at the knee thus stems from weakness of the lower back muscles and the muscles that surround the hip from behind (gluteus maximus, adductor magnus) and from the outer aspect (gluteus medius and tensor fascia lata).

Therefore tightness of the hamstring muscles cannot be accomplished just by stretching the hamstring muscles. Shortening contractions have to be performed to muscles constantly exposed to lengthening contractions. These include perform shortening contractions to the spinal muscles from neck to the base of the spine. At the hip, shortening contractions have to be performed to the gluteus maximus and adductor magnus muscles which have nerve related muscle weakness in the presence of constant exposure to lengthening contractions.

Shortening contractions have to be performed also for the tensor fascia lata and the rectus femoris muscles. Since these muscles have to be selectively activated, the treatment of choice is motor point stimulation using eToims Twitch Relief method.
http://technorati.com/tag/hamstring+muscles
© 2007 copyright www.stopmusclepain.com hamstrings

Jennifer Chu, M.D. emeritus professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, pioneered eToims Twitch Relief Method that utilizes surface electrical stimulation to locate motor points (trigger points). The motor points are then stimulated to induce strong local muscle contractions, termed twitches. This results in reduced muscle pain and discomfort in the areas that were stimulated. The involved pain/discomfort-relieving mechanism is thought to include local muscle exercise and stretch effects.eToims Soft Tissue Comfort Center® specializes in diagnosis and treatment which ends muscle discomfort and pain