"Tight" Hamstrings.

You’ll often hear someone complain of “tight muscles” – most commonly, the hamstrings.

“Holy crap, are my hamstrings tight”, she said as she touched her palms to the floor. Or did something like the pose to the left.

Ummm…yeah.

You know, if you can touch your entire palm to the floor, your hamstrings aren’t really “tight” – just the opposite really; you have very flexible hamstring muscles.

If your hamstrings are so flexible why do they feel so tight?

I’d posit that it’s because they’re too weak.

You see, most people think of muscles as large rubber bands – if their muscles feel tight, they stretch them so they loosen up a little. Well, the muscles do act like large rubber bands, but in a slightly different way.

They act like the bands in this second picture. In other words, they act to suspend; to hold things together – those “things” being your bones and joints.

Each of your body’s 639 muscles plays a specific role (for example, the rotator cuff muscles hold your arm in its socket). If a particular muscle group is strong, then it’s easy for it to perform its function.

However, if a muscle group is weak, then doing its job becomes much harder. So much so that it constantly “works” – it constantly contracts “tightly”, struggling to perform its duty (much as if you were to hold a full bucket of water at your side for 6 hours). While you can simply set down the water to relieve the strain in your arm and shoulder, your hamstrings can’t simply not contract while you stand (otherwise, you’d fall over). Instead, they strain to keep your body in upright posture – and while they’re doing so, they feel tight.

Maybe you’ve noticed that you get a stiff, tight neck when you’re stressed. It’s because in times of stress, you’re likely to unconsciously tighten the muscles in your neck. Sustain this contraction for a period of time, and what happens? Not surprisingly, your neck muscles begin to cramp and tighten up; perhaps you may even create or irritate some trigger points and start getting referred pain in your upper back and head.

What is there to do, then? By strengthening the muscle, you give it more ability to do its job. If a task requires 100 pounds of force and your muscle can generate 100 pounds of force, then it has to work at 100% all of the time. However, if your muscle were capable of generating 300 pounds of force, that same task now only requires a 33% effort – meaning you can do it easier and for longer periods of time.

Most people complain of tightness and pain in their necks, backs, and hamstrings. Maybe what you need is some neck, lumbar, and hamstring strength, not stretching. Perform deadlifts, not another yoga class!