My hamstrings are tight!

So what does your current leg workout look like? Start off with a 5 minute warm up walk on the treadmill? Check. Go to the squat rack and do some "back squats" (I say back in that you are lifting the weight with your back, not your legs). Check. Head over to the leg press for 5 sets of increasing weight exponentially with an overly wide stance? Check. Head over to the hack squat machine (usually right next to the leg press) and do 5 more sets but with more reps and lighter weight? Check. Strut over to the leg curl machine to get the "back side of the leg" and knock out 4 sets? Check.

Okay, so I exaggerated that a little bit. In our already quadriceps and hip-flexor dominant world, you would think we would want to balance out the legs a little bit.

              Hip Flexors                                                                   Quadriceps   

In fact, I cannot think of any occasion in an average person's day where they get posterior leg work. As we stay in our sedentary lifestyles and practice poor training methods, we are just shifting all of our weight to the low back and hamstrings. I am positive that you have spotted someone today that had anterior pelvic tilt.

Anterior Pelvic Tilt on the left

Just because a muscle is tight, does not mean it is strong. The 2 main muscle groups in leg extension are the hamstring group and the glute group. People with anterior pelvic tilt tend to have tight hamstrings. Just stretching the hamstrings group only takes care of half the problem. Since the hamstring and glute group work together (synergistic), something is not firing right. Yep, you guessed it, your butt muscle. But Matt, I thought the butt was only there to sit on and cushion my sitting position? Well you are correct, that IS what you use it for, and not what it is supposed to be used for. Ask any good coach, trainer, physical therapist how important proper glute function is. Better yet, watch ESPN and see how many players of all sports are on the injured list due to hamstrings. Hamstring this and hamstring that. Bottom line is that if you improve glute muscle function, a lot of those injuries will go away. What exactly do the 3 glute muscles do?

•  Extends the femur and brings the bent thigh in line with the body (kicking your leg back)
• In a one legged stance, it supports the pelvis by tilting is posterior (or you would collapse forward)
• Keep body in an erect position by drawing the pelvis backward and assisted by you guessed it, the hamstring muscle group. 
• The glute medius and minimus abduct the leg (taking a side step)
• They are also lateral stabilizers of the pelvis (lunging and not twisting your legs)
• There are many more but these are important to the discussion

I hate anatomy too. You don't need to know all of these, but it important to realize their overall function in our activities and training. Next time you watch somebody lower their body at the gym or at work, do their knees collapse in? That means their glute muscles are not turning on. This can lead to hip, knee, and back pain. So when these people extend their leg (the back leg in walking) their hamstring will dominate the movement. Hamstrings are more of a hip extensor than a knee flexor. Doing leg curls (lying on your stomach and bringing your ankle to your butt) is almost taking the hamstring out of context. The machine was built in the 70's or 80's to isolate muscles for bodybuilders. We have totally taken function out of our workouts. Properly deadlifting works both the glutes and hamstrings in a hip extension movement. And we wonder why we get so many damn hamstring strains...

Stretching is one of the most controversial topics in exercise science today. There was a great discussion on the strengthcoach.com forums about how we achieve new "length" of a muscle. For example, when we simply hold a stretch on the hamstring muscle group, is the actual muscle achieving new length or is it other connective tissue, like fascia. Even if we actually achieve new length of a muscle, how long does it hold? A muscle is just like any other tissue which is made up of millions of cells put together. These muscle cells are lined up to make a muscle fiber.

A muscle might be short, stiff, or toned. Hip flexors might be very short after 10 years of sitting 60 hours a week. This shortness may lead to stiffness. A cyclist might need short hip flexors to generate power. That does not mean that they should be stiff, which would hinder their performance and cause injury. Going back to the "short" hamstrings and the weak glute muscle, we definitely need strengthen the weak butt muscles while making sure we do not substitute the hamstring because they share a similar action (hip extension). A highly toned muscle might mean that it will take over as a stabilizer in movements that it should not. That would mean that it is overactive. After all of that, we still have much discussion and research to do before we reach some solid answers. After those solid answers, there are going to be many circumstances to consider on how to treat a "short" or "toned" muscle.

So how does this pertain to my posture, training, and pain?

We can make general assumptions on how somebody's posture can be affected by sitting at a desk for long periods of time. I have seen them in a lot of clients. Is this assumption correct for other groups like football players? Absolutely not. People wonder why we have only recently begin to restore posture and resort to pain killers and surgery. Technology advances and new research have made giant leaps in these areas. We will fix what is the problem, right?

There are definitely  circumstances where we need to perform surgery or somebody needs to take prescription medication, but we should not substitute those in just because we can't move well. Moving well should become a first resort. Once we move well, we can run and train in a progressive way and not hinder our bodies with pain.

If I have a client that shows no movement dysfunctions either naturally or because we have continuously worked on them, I push their limits. People think that corrective exercise is a fad because because people spend to much time on it. Once they can pass certain tasks, they need progressive resistance to continually show effects from training. Doing a heavy single-leg dead lift is not easy, but it is certainly one of the most beneficial exercises one can do to reinforce proper muscle alignment and growth. The single-leg dead lift stimulates both the hamstring and glute muscles to a very high degree. Muscle growth leads to what most people like to call "tone". Increased muscle growth stimulates the metabolism at rest and burn more calories. I think that sounds a lot like what everybody strives to achieve at the gym.