If you've got tight hamstrings then I promise you, this can be the most helpful video that
you've ever watched. I'm going to take those piano wires of yours that you got running up and
down the back of your leg, and we're going to fix them and loosen them up in the next 22 days.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. So today I get to put on my PT hat and do one
of the things I like to do the most, and that's to help you to fix issues, especially those
common issues that plague a lot of us. And when it comes to tight hamstrings, a lot of
us are dealing with them. So, what if I told you I can help you to fix them in the next 22 days?
That's right, I'm going to give you a game plan that's going to do two things. Number one, it's
going to dramatically loosen your hamstrings and we re going to have ways to objectively measure
that. It's also going to instill a stretching habit that you can do and find very easy to
fit into your schedule no matter how busy you are. And we're going to get the job done. So that said,
guys, I want to start breaking down what we're going to do day by day to make sure that by the
end of this year, hamstrings are feeling a hell of a lot looser than they are right now.
All right, so before we even get started here, there is one disclaimer that I want to make sure
that they make as a physical therapist especially. And that is if you look like this, that you likely
have a condition called anterior pelvic tilt. And you would have tight hamstrings in this condition,
but it's not because the hamstrings are short, is because your pelvis is pulling your hamstrings
into a position where they feel tight. So, what I would advise is not to run into doing these
stretches to fix that problem. But rather to go over that video and fix your anterior
pelvic tilt the way I show you there. And so with that said, if you feel hamstring
tightness and you don't have that shelf, then you can rest a glass of water on above your ass,
then you're in the right place. And when we have to do is we have to start where we always do in
our popular 22-day series and that is with a test. And this test occurs actually before you
even start on day zero. What I want you to do is get yourself up against a wall like this,
lay on the floor and then extend the non-testing leg until it's flat against the wall.
Now, with the other leg, you're going to pull it back to a position of 90 degrees of knee
flexion and hip flexion. Not too much and not too little, you want to get right at about 90 degrees.
From here all you're going to do is straighten your knee out. And as you're doing this,
make sure that you're trying to keep your toes always pointed to the ceiling
rather than pulling them back towards you. Now, from here, I want you to basically visualize
a point on the wall that lines up with the top of your toe. And this is going to give
us a chance to remeasure later on on day 22. Now, it's a little bit easier if you have a wall that
would allow you to have a landmark that you can actually find a little bit more easily.
But either way, all you have to do is stand up, make that mark on the wall, put a piece of tape,
if need be, and you're going to come back to that when you do remeasure on the last day.
But now we've got to get to the action and we're to break this down over the course of three,
seven day blocks. So, day one through seven will be blocked one day, eight through 14 will
be blocked, too. In day 15 through 21 will be block three. Each block is going to consist of
ideally two sessions, one in the morning and one at night. But before you get worried and think
I'm not going to have time at all to do this, I promise you we're talking about just minutes
in the morning and minutes at night. The reason for the split is that we want to focus separately
on our dynamic work and our static work. Because we know that each time of the day we can have
a better impact if we do it that way. So, we start the day off with our dynamic
work and there's going to be just two stretches. One that keeps the knees straight and one that has
the knee bent. And the reason for that is we want to hit both functions of the hamstrings,
they don't just flex the knee, they help to extend the hip so they can function to pull the hip back
into extension. We want to stretch them at some point with the hip flexed. At the same time,
we have to focus on the exercise that straighten the knee out. So that's we're going to do each
and every day throughout all of these blocks. And at night we're going to shift our focus once
again to the passive stretching. And the reason for this is that we get a better bang for our
buck when we perform our static stretches right before bed. Especially if we train,
our body tends to heal itself a little bit shorter overnight. So, by implementing these
stretches right before we go to bed, we tend to get a little bit less of that shortening and
tightening and have a better long-term impact. And so, with that said, let's start breaking down
the stretches and exercises that you're going to do, starting in block one. Every morning,
on days one through seven, you're going to do the following two exercises. Number one,
a leg swing, two different versions of this. You're going to stand against a wall
and only go so high as you can that you can still maintain a relatively straight knee.
Then we turn and face the wall and we do a side to side. And here we're going to try to actually
turn our toe outward and turn our toe inward. This is good because it helps us to get both
medial and lateral hamstrings a little bit more specifically, but still, in this dynamic way.
You can do three sets of eight repetitions in each direction on each leg. We move on to the
second dynamic stretch of the day and as is often the case, the exercise is oftentimes the test.
What we did on days zero actually now becomes something we can implement for the first seven
days here to try to increase the flexibility of our hamstrings. This is the active knee extension
exercise. Now, you don't have to do it up against the wall, you can simply do it down on the floor,
but the principle of the movement is the same. In this case you try to hold that position for about
three to five seconds, you release, and you go back and repeat. You do this for a total
of three sets of six reps on each leg and your work for the morning is done, just like that.
But of course, we have one more session at night, and that's where we're going to focus on,
that passive static stretching. As I said, it's going to help us to increase those hamstrings,
flexibility. And the first exercise we're going to do here is simply a standing low
hamstring stretch. And the idea here is to make sure you're doing this properly. Because a lot
of us will simply fold over because we're trying to stretch our hamstring, but that's
not actually getting directly at the hamstrings. It s involving way too much low back. Instead,
focus on getting as tall as possible to establish at least a temporary anterior pelvic tilt. Not one
of those structural ones we talked about before, to increase the engagement of the hamstrings and
get them in a prime position for stretch. Now, I simply just want you to reach your hand
out until you can feel your hamstrings light up. You're just going to simply hold this
position for 45 seconds. You're going to do two to three sets of 45 seconds on each leg,
maintaining the high chest and that slight arching your low back for this to be effective.
And then we do the last stretch here on the floor that's the knee bent position and this one is the
need a chest exercise. And all you can do is lay back and pull back into your chest as far as you
can. You're going to feel this stretch a lot higher up in the hamstrings, almost to where
they connect on the pelvis. You hold it for two to three sets for 45 seconds on each leg in your
work for the day is done. Is this exact schedule that you're going to perform for those first seven
days until we switch up the block on day eight? And speaking of day eight, that's the beginning of
our second training block, the one that we're going to repeat all the way up through day 14.
And we start with our knee straight exercise, the dynamic downward facing dog. And what I m
going to do is I'm going to actively drive my knees, which are naturally bent here, to start
into a straight up position as possible. Ideally, all the way straight. I'm going
to perform this as a set of eight and perform three to four sets in total of the exercise.
Which brings me to my second and final exercise in the morning. And this is the wall hinge.
This is that knee bent focus. So, we're going to stand with butt our against the wall feet away
from the wall and have the knees slightly bent and turned out. And the idea here is to get a really
nice stretch on the biceps femoris. And we could do that by getting into a good hinge position,
maintaining that anterior tilt in arch in the low back as I lean down. And I have the ability
to work on that mid belly muscle tissue quality because my hands are free here and I can work
on doing cross friction massage across the muscle belly during the stretch. Again, we perform this
as three to four sets of eight repetitions and your work for the morning is done.
Which leads us to our pre bed static stretching portion of our second block and it starts with
the wall stretch. And here I actually get to take advantage of the wall as I use it to help
me to accentuate the stretch that I had from even block one. I place one foot up against the wall,
actually this time incorporating a little bit of calf into this, which is going to also be
beneficial since it crosses the knee. And I'm going to get my chest to approach the wall and
have the wall to actually climb up to assist in that process. Once again, we're holding this for
45 seconds to three sets on each leg. From there we hit the floor and we want to
work on that knee bent position and we use a bend now or a towel to assist. The idea being whatever
I could pull actively with my hands is going to be increased because of the leverage the towel
provides in this stretch. So, we're stepping our game up once again to allow ourselves to get that
deeper stretch, two to three sets once again for 45 seconds. We do this for the entire block.
And so on day 15, we begin our third and final block. And the first exercise is the tabletop
side, to side stretch. What's interesting here, as we've been doing over the course of the 21 days,
is we continue to up the ante of the stretch this time, including the abductor's a bit.
You're going to want to have your hands parallel to the floor. So whatever surface you choose,
you might have to be a little bit higher or lower to accommodate that position.
At this point, what you re going to do is this simply let your hands ride back and forth on
that surface as you do so, rotating your upper torso. What that does is it allows that stretch
to carry down through the hamstrings. But we get a little bit of a media lateral shift because of the
rotation from top to bottom. You're going three to four sets of eight repetitions here on each side,
left to right, equals one rep. Again, we have our second exercise and this time
it is the Bulgarian hamstring stretch. This one leg position is going to allow us to
focus a little bit more directly on that single hamstring so we could really focus on just one
side at a time. Go three sets of each leg, eight repetitions, as we've been doing all along.
Which brings us to the nighttime portion of our final stretching block. Our static focus
here is going to start with a doorway stretch. You're going to sit with your hip right next to
the doorjamb. At that point, lay on your back and lift the leg that's closest to the door
up against the jam itself. And by this point in time, you're likely going to have a much easier
time getting your legs straight than had you have tried this when we first started. That's
a good thing, improvements always good. But now I want to make this even more of an
intense stretch. What I'm going to do is going to reach through of my opposite hand, grab onto the
back side of that doorjamb and pull myself even further into a stretch. You're going to hold this
for 45 seconds, as always, two to three sets on each leg. And with that, we go back to the final
stretch of the session. Once again, maintain that knee bent position with the hip in high flexion
actually done in a high position here. We call this the standing high hamstring stretch.
So instead of focusing on keeping the foot low and maintaining a straight knee here,
we're going to bring this up as high as we possibly can and we're going to lean into it.
And as always, it got to maintain that slight arch in your low back when you do this
rather than folding your pelvis underneath you. Again, we do a two to three sets of 45 seconds,
really feeling that deep stretch right up under your cheek if you're doing this right.
And just like that guys, in 22 days, I promise you, if you can get consistent
with these stretches, you're going to feel and see a difference very, very quickly. One of the
things people do is they give up on stretching far too soon because they don't see the impact
that they want to see or feel, the impact that they want to feel because they're oftentimes not
doing it right. We know the hamstring has two major functions. We have to hit both of them,
and we know that, and muscle can be stretched both dynamically and statically
and we're going to do those as well. This entire 22-day plan is laid out here
for you guys step by step. I'm showing you the screen shots so you can make sure you can take
them and implement them starting today. If you guys found this video helpful, make sure you leave
your comments and thumbs below. As always, guys, we put the science back in strength and I give you
the stuff that works. If you're looking for all of our step-by-step plans, they're all available over
at athleanx.com. In the meantime, let me know what you want me to cover, I'll do my best to
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