Tight Hamstrings: what is the cause?
The most common advice people offer when you complain about tight hamstrings is to just stretch some more. When that doesn’t work, just try to stretch some more. If something is tight, you just need to be more flexible and have better mobility, right?
Using the word “tight” to describe an injury means almost nothing but that doesn’t seem to stop all types of practitioners from labelling their clients with a tight this or that.
Stretching and mobility have become the normal prescription for anything that feels tight. We can often default into a mode of feeling guilty for not stretching enough and blame the persistent tightness on our slack approach to stretching after exercise.
But a better approach is to ask why the muscle is tight in the first place.
Nerve Entrapment
Have you experienced any of the following?
• Numbness
• Aching
• Burning
• Tension
If so, then you most likely have had a nerve entrapment. Nerves need to pass through or floss their way between muscles to get to where they need to go. They are usually built with a little extra slack, similar to a rubber band (around 15 %) to allow them to stretch a bit.
Nerves can get entrapped in 156 places in the body. When you have a bunch of adhesion, it can cause the nerve to literally get glued to the surrounding muscle. Then when you try to move the area, it creates tension that leads to an increase in a stretch feeling because all the slack gets used up quickly. So what does this have to do with your hamstrings being tight? If your nerve is being compromised and squeezed on by an adhesion, it will cause your hamstring to engage in what is called protective tension. When this happens, your hamstring will feel very tight and will not respond well to stretching mechanisms.
How do you know if you have this issue?
• Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart and knees relatively straight.
• Bend down and touch the ground (if you can.) You should be able to easily touch the ground. If you can’t, there is an increased chance that you have nerve entrapment.
• If you feel the stretch primarily behind the knees or especially in the calf muscle, then you are a slam-dunk candidate for this entrapment.
The next time you are stretching your hamstrings and feel a sharp “pull,” please stop immediately. All you are doing is causing more damage to the nerve. Get to a soft tissue specialist who can focus on removing the adhesion gradually with their hands.
Lumbar Disc Injury
If you frequently experience pain in your hamstrings, ask yourself these questions:
• Is the hamstring pain worse in the morning when you get out of bed?
• Does it hurt worse with sitting?
• Do you have any numbness or tingling down the leg?
• Is your back extra beat up after squatting or dead lifting?
• Do you ever feel sharp or stabbing pain in your low back?
• After sitting for a long time do you experience increased pain when trying to stand up?
If any of these are positive, there is a good chance that you have some type of injury to the lumbar disc. When you have damage to your disc, the hamstrings respond with what was mentioned above, a protective tightness. This is the body’s way of keeping the disc from getting any further damaged, sort of like hitting the brakes. All the surrounding muscles sacrifice their normal functions to unload the lumbar disc, which leads to a feeling of chronic “tightness” in the hamstrings.
So how do you know you have a disc injury? One simple way is to obtain an MRI but a proper diagnosis involves a thorough history, exam, and imaging (remembering that X-rays do not show soft tissue, just bone).
If you discover you do have a disc issue, get specific and professional help for it!
Find the Root Cause Before Attempting a Fix
There is a lot of confusion surrounding the causes of tight hamstrings. People often engage in an obligatory stretch routine to eliminate the issue, without knowing what the true problem is.
If you are trying to work through “tight” hamstrings simply by stretching them, chances are they’ll only get tighter.
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