Treat Tight Hamstring Muscles Health Video

The hamstrings are the muscles on the posterior sides of the upper legs. Get expert tips and advice on health and medical issues in this wellness video.

Take Action

Stretch hamstrings
Hold the stretch
Slowly increase the stretch

About this Author

Russ Paine is a well-known physical therapist with the Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hospital. After getting his degree in physical therapy from Texas Women's University, he trained for several years under David Drez, MD, a renowned surgeon and sports medicine specialist. He has been a rehab consultant for the Houston Rockets, Houston Astros and NASA. He has given hundreds of presentations in his career in the US and abroad, and has published many chapters in text books and papers in peer review journals.

RUSS PAINE: So we're going to talk about tight hamstrings now. And typically, you should be able to lift your leg up to close to 90 degrees. This particular individual is a little tight on his hamstrings, and you want this leg to be down. So we are going to show you a couple of ways to stretch your hamstring. But before we do that, we will tell you things that can cause or result of having tight hamstrings. Let us say you are a golfer and you have tight hamstrings. As you bend over to address the golf ball and you have tight hamstrings, if your hamstring is tight, you can't put the normal curve on your low back. If your hamstring is loose, you are able to maintain a good lumbar lordotic posture. So having tight hamstrings can cause that. Tight hamstrings are also associated with back pain, because your hamstring is attached to the ischial tuberosities. Those are the bones that you sit on. Okay, so hamstring flexibility is very, very important. It also can cause you to have kneecap problems. So if you have tight hamstrings, you have patellofemoral arthritis. Go ahead and jump up, Ross. Let me show you how to stretch your hamstring. Now, if you look at me and you see me lean forward, it looks like my hamstrings are pretty flexible, because I can reach all the way past my foot. But here is the way you stretch your hamstring effectively. You want to put a curve in your low back, so you rock your pelvis forward like this and you do a little bit of a tilt with your pelvis. At the bottom of your pelvis is the ischial tuberosities, so you pull that back, it puts the hamstring on a stretch and then you lean forward. And that is how far that I could go. I am a little bit tight. Okay? This is all lumbar movement, see? My low back is doing the stretch. This is more isolated hamstring stretching. Again, with hamstring flexibility, you want to hold this position for 30 seconds and do five repetitions. You can do this sitting in a chair or you can do it in this position. Hamstring flexibility is very important to preventing injuries and also treating hamstring pulls.