Tight Hamstrings? Here are the Four Reasons!

How many of you can touch your toes? We established in the last Tip of the Week that hamstrings are vital for stability and consistency in the golf swing. Have you tried stretching your hamstrings out only to find out that tomorrow when you go to stretch again, you are back to square one? It is a common occurrence…and the reason is that true shortness in the hamstrings is but one of 4 reasons why hamstrings are tight. The hamstrings will feel “tight” to you regardless of why, but understanding why will help you fix them once and for all.

Here are four reasons:

1. Protective Tension of the Hamstrings
This is seen in the person who has excessive forward tilt of the pelvis. That forward tilt puts the hamstrings on tension, and leads to excessive activity in the hamstring to protect the lower back from injuries like fractures, lumbar tightness, and other back injuries. The fix for this problem is rooted in improving abdominal and glute function, and stretching hip flexors and lower back muscles. That will reestablish a neutral pelvis, and reduce the tension on the hamstring. This is seen mostly in children, women, and younger men.

2. Neural Tension
The feeling of tightness in the hamstrings can also come from another area, say the lower back or more specifically the discs in the lower back. It is uncommon for those with lumbar disc injuries and degeneration to present with radicular pain, tightness, or numbness/tingling into the lower extremities including the hamstrings. The symptoms might come from nerve entrapment in soft tissue structures further down the extremity. Aggressively stretching the hamstrings with this problem can actually make these symptoms worse. As a result it is important to see a medical professional to rule out causes further up with the appropriate clinical exams and necessary tests.

3. Shortened or Actually Tight Hamstrings
Truly short hamstrings are a result of sustained and prolonged protective tension, and or sustained postures of sitting where the hip and the knee are bent up for a great deal of the day. In this case the fibers of the hamstring muscles (and there are 3 muscles in each leg) are shortened because of protective function and sitting for hours each day. What happens is that the over active hamstring (protective function) is combined with slack on the muscle for hours at a time, and the muscles adaptively shorten. That means the tissues loose length and ACTUALLY become time. This is most common in adult men who are in sedentary jobs like sales, sitting at a desk, drive for hours a day, etc. We see some women and children with this but it is much rarer. Manual therapy with postural rebalancing usually fixes this issue.

4. Previous Hamstrings Injury
We have seen people who have previous injuries to a hamstring. Strains and tears a common in athletes during competition and training. The strain if not treated well can lead to a “tight” hamstring. The hamstring will feel knotted, and boggy or gunked up where the injury was and that will lead to protective function and shortness. If you have a history of hamstring strain or tear, be careful with passive intense stretching. The muscle might not take it well and pain can show up or return. Manual therapy and postural retraining is a great solution for this problem.

In summary, your hamstrings are vital in the toe touch. If they are “tight” for any one of these reasons, they will affect the toe touch and your stability and consistency in your golf. The good news is that there is a way to assess what is making your hamstrings feel “tight” and then fix that issue for a lasting improvement. That is one of the thing FitGolf can do for you.

Next week we will begin to fix the hamstring problems reviewed in this tip.  Please let me know if you have questions by clicking on the button below.

Remember if you can touch your toes, the data says you will be more consistent.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

All the best.