One of the most common things we hear from athletes is “x muscle/joint is really tight, do you have any stretches for that?” The most common muscle they complain about is their hamstrings. That is a much more complicated question than the athlete realizes, and we often have to fully assess the athlete before we can answer it.
Tightness is a symptom or a subjective feeling. But often, the athlete that feels tight will commonly have full hamstring range of motion. The example we give, is the gymnast that can’t stop complaining about how “tight” her hamstrings are, as she does the splits or has her foot up by her ears. In this example, stretching wouldn’t help the feeling of “tightness.”
Tightness can be multi-factorial, you may feel tight because the muscle is weak and your brain responds by increasing the resting tone in the muscle, you may be tight because you had a really hard workout or did a lot of sprinting the day before, or you may be tight because the muscle is actually short and needs to be lengthened. Sometimes tightness can be a good thing, it may be protective to try to keep a joint out of a range of motion that you don’t have very good active control over. Sometimes, tightness and lack of motion could be a contributing factor to an injury.
“Sometimes tightness can be a good thing, it may be protective to try to keep a joint out of a range of motion that you don’t have very good active control over. Sometimes, tightness and lack of motion could be a contributing factor to an injury.”
Each of these scenarios would require a slightly different course of action to address. It is important to assess your movement, range of motion and strength to develop the right plan of action for you.
Are you an athlete or coach that is interested in learning more about how to keep your hamstrings healthy? Check out our free resource on keeping your hamstrings bulletproof in our free online course:
Have more questions or wondering about your own lingering pain or injury? Reach out to us today and schedule your free 15-min consult to talk to a doctor of physical therapy and get you the answers you need!