26/02/2016
SO IMPORTANT TO STRETCH THE HAMSTRINGS PEEPS.......
Stretching your hamstrings is a bit like leading a reluctant mule. If you pull the mule, it will pull back. But you can coax the mule along if you make friends with it. Help the beast relax, give it a nice place to go, and it will happily follow you.
So it is with your hamstrings. If you stretch by yanking on them, they’ll only yank back harder. But you can coax them to loosen up if you set them at ease and treat them right.
It’s well worth the effort to befriend these large, powerful muscles. They often carry an enormous amount of tension, so releasing them feels marvelously relaxing, both physically and psychologically. Lengthening them also helps protect your lower back. Your hamstrings anchor your sitting bones, limiting the forward tilt of your pelvis at your hip joints. This is good; it provides a stable base for your spine. But if your hamstrings are too tight, forward bending can strain your lower back and lead to serious injury. Even if your hamstrings aren’t particularly short, they can restrict your performance and put your back at risk in yoga postures that call for deep movement. This applies to most straight-leg forward bends and also to demanding poses like Hanumanasana (Monkey God Pose).
It’s helpful to think of freeing your hamstrings as lengthening them rather than stretching them. “Stretching” is a term better reserved for inanimate objects. It’s true that we often approach our hamstrings as if they had no intelligence of their own, hoping to force them into a new shape just as we might stretch a pair of new shoes. But this approach can only get you so far, because a major factor keeping your hamstrings short is the stretch reflex, a built-in feature of the nervous system that holds muscles at a preset length and causes them to contract when they’re pulled beyond it.
The secret to lengthening hamstrings is to learn safe, effective ways to work with (or around) this reflex so it doesn’t stop your forward bends prematurely. Like a mule, your hamstrings know darn well when they’re being tugged. They sense how far, how fast, and how hard you’re pulling them—and if you overdo it, they resist stubbornly. But like a mule, your hamstrings can be convinced that it’s safe, even pleasurable, to let go and come along on the journey.