Welcome to this video where we'll take you through the benefits of hamstring stretches.
There are quite a few you might find. You may be getting low back or knee problems that potentially
coming from tight hamstrings and we'll cover that in this presentation.
My name is Claire, I'm a Physiotherapist from PhysioFit Health.
If you know that your legs are a little bit tight and could
be doing with a little bit more flexibility, then download our foam roller guide. The details will be
in the description below. It will just go through how to use a foam roller on the different areas of
the legs, which muscles to target and can really help with that flexibility. Before I go through
the benefits of stretches, I just wanted to show you this which is the pyramid and
just point out that flexibility is one of the building blocks to everything. So, in my opinion
flexibility is really important as with range of movement and balance. And then once you've
got really good range of movement and flexibility, you can build on it with your strength and
endurance. And so, yes that's where the stretches come into things. Now, as I said at the beginning
you may be finding that your low back is perhaps a little bit stiff and sore. Maybe a little bit
tight. The hamstrings are the back of the thigh and they attach to the pelvis and so, it can alter the
mechanics around the pelvis and can make that low back just feel a little bit more uncomfortable. So,
benefits of stretching your hamstrings could be that it improves tension tightness in the
low back. The hamstrings also attach into the back of the knee so, they help bend the knee.
Now, if the hamstrings are tight mechanically it could cause the knee to be slightly bent which
means that you're walking around on a slightly bent knee without really realizing sometimes
could be causing you aches and pains around the knee. So, stretching your hamstrings another
benefit would be that it would improve tension around your knee. Now, this is my very
technical diagram here of the back of the leg. You've got the white line demonstrating
a nerve and the black line is demonstrating the hamstrings. Just to give you that rough idea that
the hamstrings and the nerves down the back of the leg are very closely linked together. And so,
one can potentially irritate the other one. So, your benefits of stretching the hamstrings could be
that you get happy nerves, that the nerves are just a little bit more comfortable there. They've
got a little bit more freedom to move. So, those are your more specific benefits of hamstring
stretches. I'll take you on to this slide, you do get just more general benefits from stretching
and really that goes anywhere in the body. And these are the benefits, it will improve
your range of movement. And if I'll remind you at the beginning showed you that lovely pyramid,
flexibility is your building blocks. It will increase the blood flow to the area which can
only be a good thing. Just blood flow brings in more oxygen takes away any waste products and
you get improved awareness, body awareness of the area. Because you kind of get that brain focusing
around the area that you're stretching. And that body awareness is really useful because it just
helps you pick up on things perhaps just a little bit quicker than if you didn't quite have so much
body awareness. Here's your summary slide for the benefits of your hamstring stretches. It could help
your low back, it could help your knee, might help with your nerves and then the general benefits
of stretching are to develop a bit of better body awareness and to increase the blood flow to the
area. Just increasing that oxygen and taking away all of the waste products so, just generally
feel good. Next steps that I would suggest are to download the foam roller guide. Foam rollers
I think are great just to increase really the blood flow to the area just to target different