A lot of people have tight hamstrings and sometimes those hamstrings can
contribute to lower back pain. But then it might hurt to stretch the hamstrings
because of the lower back pain, so I'm going to show you a safe way that you
can get it all done. Hey I'm Dr. Sten Ekberg with Wellness For Life and by
subscribing to our channel you will learn everything that you need to know
to master true health. A lot of people want to stretch their hamstrings but
then when they sit down on the floor and try to stretch them they find that their
back hurts. So how can you stretch it safely without aggravating anything?
I'm going to show you something you can do at home we're going to talk about the
hamstring muscles and show you how to do it. I'm gonna use a couple of boxes here
and you could use a kitchen table or anything that's appropriate height for
you you want to start kind of carefully and then you can work your way up so a
lot of people when they sit down and they try to stretch then they're back
rounds out they put a lot of strain on their lower back so you want to do the
stretch standing up and let me show you right here and by doing this now you're
maintaining your normal spinal curves and then when you lean forward to
stretch toward toward the leg you don't want to round your back out again you
want to keep your chest up maintain your lumbar curve and then carefully lean
forward so it doesn't look like I'm stretching a whole lot here but it is a
tremendous stretch actually I could easily round out my back and reach the
toe but this is less of a stretch on the hamstring then this is now there's two
main hamstring groups one runs on the inside from here up to the pelvis and
one runs on the other side from the knee up to the pelvis so by adjusting your
hip position you can emphasize one more or the
so if I want to stretch the outside I'm gonna turn my hip over toward that
direction so I'm gonna close the hip down and now when I stretch I stretch
almost entirely on the outside if I want to stretch the inside I open up the hip
so that my foot is facing about 45 degrees out and now when I lean I'm
stretching mostly on the inside so then of course you want to alternate and do
both sides equally you maintain your posture you carefully lean forward and
there you have a wonderful stretch now step two you want to add a little bit
more to this so instead of just holding the stretch you want to add a
contraction this is what's called a PNF or proprioceptive neuromuscular
facilitation so now I'm gonna get into my stretch I'm going to hold it for
about ten seconds and then I'm gonna push the heel down into the support so
you're not going to see any motion because this is what's called a static
contraction but I'm starting to push that heel down so there is a pretty
strong contraction and I'm maintaining it and you want to hold that for about
ten maybe fifteen seconds then you relax the muscle and then you lean another
couple of inches and you hold that again for 10-15 seconds
so here's a wonderful way that you can get a tremendous efficient hamstring
stretch and put absolutely no strain on your low back so let me show you the
stretch again straight from the side so you can see exactly what it looks like
and I'm going to start with the hips facing forward turning the hips forward
and then I'm stretching the lateral the outside part of the hamstring the most
and I am keeping my posture upright I'm maintaining my arch in the back and then
I'm leaning forward and the better you keep that arch in the low back the more
the stronger that stretch of the hamstring is so even though it doesn't
look like much of a stretch I'm getting a tremendous stretch here so again we
would stretch for 10 push down for 10 relax for 10 and go a little further
okay now let's show with your other leg okay upright lean forward
and then if we're going to do the inside now I'm turning I'm opening up my hip so
that I'm getting a 90 45 to 90 degree angle on that foot and now you can even
stretch sideways like this if you like and now we're getting a only a stretch
on the inside you could turn a 45 degree and go a little bit in between and you
can do all the angles in between then you're really getting to every portion
of that hamstring muscle it's a perfectly safe stretch even if you have
low back pain because you're taking the low back out of it completely let me
know how that works for you I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions
or suggestions don't forget to leave comments down below and hit that
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for today