Hamstring health and strength is an underrated muscle of the overall knee and hip joint that is quite often overlooked. Alot of people will target the quadriceps when trying to protect the knees, or target the glutes when protecting the hip, however the hamstring crosses both joints through the back of the thigh. They are responsible for bending the knee and straightening the hip.
Having sufficient hamstring strength is vitally important for a number of reasons:
Injury Prevention
Performance
A common complaint in the majority of the adult population are “tight, inflexible” hamstrings.
Whilst it can feel like the hamstrings are tight and need to be stretched – often this is your brain’s way of protecting the hamstrings or other joints as the muscle is not strong enough to support it in the range you want it to be (i.e lengthened). Therefore it will give the notion of “tightness”. Whilst static stretching can have it’s place, this will ultimately not build strength through range of motion and the body will continue to protect against putting your body in a vulnerable position. Therefore it is often simply weakness and instability that gives this feeling of “tightness”.
To then reduce this, instead of doing countless stretches, a more effective intervention is to strengthen these.
Because the hamstrings cross both the knee and hip joint, it is important to train it in different ways.
Some effective exercises that you can typically complete at home with little equipment:
There are a multitude of exercises that you can do to strengthen the hamstring, but here are just a few that load it in different ways.
If you have ongoing tight hamstrings or constantly getting hamstring strains and not sure where to start on your journey, at Active Balance we can help! Contact us for further direction!
