Hamstring Restoration: Exploring The Paradox of Tightening to Loosen.
(Stop Stretching Your Hamstrings part 2)
The paradox of balancing your hamstrings, is that often you have to contract them in order to get them to release. We started this discussion in ‘Stop Stretching Your Hamstings', bringing your attention to the diaphragms hierarchical priority in directing the bodies function and position. We’ll expand it today by exploring the foundational steps, and reasons behind them, required to restore functional hamstring length.
If it is not your style to dive into the logic and more ‘technical’ details, please feel free to skip to the end where I explain the 5 basic steps underpinning this aspect of hamstring balance, and go over the Postural Restoration Institutes 90/90 Hip Lift technique (attached video) as an example.
Simply put, we need our brains to find the sleeping deep abdominal wall and wake it up in order to quiet the diaphragm and help the hamstrings control the pelvis. These abs are likely stretched, inaccessible and un-contractible in their current state so we must first change their position before we train them.
For this reason there is an exact order of operations for the initial stages of functional hamstring restoration. These steps include; positioning and using your hamstrings in an advantaged state, exhaling, contracting your transversus and oblique abdominal wall, and then inhaling with your abs on!
The ultimate target in this restoration project is the abdominal wall. Finding and using your abs correctly is the key to freeing your hammies. I’ll explain.
Your abs have two primary roles in maintaining postural harmony that directly effect the work requirements of your hamstrings: First to counter, balance, anchor, inhibit and control the contraction of the diaphragm. Second to work in synergy with the hamstrings, maintaining posterior (tail tucked under) positional control of the pelvis, balancing hip flexion and low back extension.
If your deep abdominal wall is asleep, then the diaphragm has unbalanced influence over the pelvis and rib cage, locking the low back and tightening the hips.
If your deep abdominal wall is asleep, then the hamstrings have been left all alone to constrain these powerful diaphragmatic forces.
If your deep abdominal has been asleep, Rib Van Winkle style, then waking it up for use is not so simple. It’s been hibernating, off the job so long it may need coffee, a triple sugar doughnut and a bucket of ice water…. Even then, the first hurdle is getting the boss, your BRAIN, to actually find your abs with a nerve connection in order to sound the wake-up alarm.
Neurologically this is a difficult task. Not only are pathways and connections easily forgotten and dropped (sensory motor amnesia), but the stretch forces that the abdominals are under keep them virtually unrecognizable to your nervous system (it’s the same concept behind how stretching works to quiet a tight muscle).
This lengthened abdominal resting state not only effects the brains ability to locate the abs electrically, but it also makes the actual physical contraction of the individual muscle cells themselves almost impossible. There’s a point where the origin and insertions (end points) of any muscle become too far apart to actually ‘zip’ together (sliding filament theory… sarcomeres to far apart for bridging… insert long physiological description here), the result of which is dysfunctional muscle use resulting in compensated movements, pain and injury.
For this reason, in order for the abdominals to be functionally accessed and activated, they must first be physically shortened without active contraction before attempting to contract them correctly. Huh? Read that again…. you have to physically shorten the muscle, without using the muscle, before you can use it correctly. Let that sink in a moment…then I’ll explain how to do it.
What follows will list the order of operations for functional hamstring restoration, and teach you the PRI 90/90 Hip Lift technique as an example.
Begin with these 5 steps before any extra stretching, rolling, massaging, Rolfing, or pounding out of your hamstrings takes place.
1: Start by placing the hamstrings in a mechanically advantaged position to control the pelvis. (Hamstrings learn they can work with strength and control)
2: Second, position your pelvis posterior (tail tucked) using your hamstrings only. (Abdominal end points getting closer together.)
3: Next, position your ribs internally on the spine by exhaling, settling and flattening your cage. (Abdominal end points getting closer together.)
4: Then, use your now neurologically accessible oblique and tranversus abdominals to anchor the ribcage…setting off the cascade of neural cues that inhibits the diaphragm, low back, hips and hammies.
5: Lastly, re-inhale maintaining this abdominal connection, teaching the brain abdominal/diaphragm balance for functional respiration and posture.
I’ll walk you through The Postural Restoration Institutes 90/90 Hip Lift as an example and quintessential technique for accomplishing this neuromuscular balance.
PRI 90/90 Hip Lift.
1: Laying supine with your feet on a chair in a 90/90 position, head supported with a pillow. Your abdominal wall should be relaxed and as soft as possible. Ideally you would use something like a small ball between your knees to squeeze and keep your legs from rotating out.
2: Feel the back of your heels in the chair and press them down to engage your hamstrings (back of your legs), lifting your tailbone slightly off the floor and fully rotating your pelvis posterior, tail tucked under.
3: Exhale gently, allowing your sternum to slide down toward your pelvis with your lower ribs flattening along the floor.
4: As you attempt to exhale more fully, engage your oblique abdominals to expel the air completely, pulling your ribs and belly down toward the floor (think of the A shape from your sternum to your outer hips, and the V shape from your pubic bone to your outer hips drawing together.)
5: Allow your neck to relax in to a lordosis as you exhale (head tipping back).
6: Pause for 3 to 4 seconds at end of your exhale.
7: Maintain this abdominal contraction as you as you re-inhale down through this contraction into your pelvis and sacrum. Do not allow your front ribs and pelvis to pull apart at all. Air will flow into your back and your inhalation will not be that deep.
8: Exhale more fully, ratcheting up the abdominal contraction and rib ‘flattening’ position.
9: Repeat for 3-4 total breaths.
I hope this helps keep you thinking and moving in the right direction... good luck.