STRETCH

Welcome to the stressful, too-many-parties, family-filled, end-of-year wrap up, glittering time of year. You know what you need to do? STRETCH! This series should take less than 20 minutes. Make sure to do the whole sequence in order for the full effect. Enjoy!

1. Breathe. Lie on your back and take a few full breaths. This stretches your insides and is an important first step to any stretching process.

2. Hamstring Stretch. Draw one knee into your chest and loop a strap (belt, long towel, scarf) around the sole of your foot. Extend your leg to the sky at an angle that allows you to keep an even pelvis and long spine. 1 minute each side.

3. Figure Four. Cross your right ankle over your left knee and bring your left leg to tabletop. Hold behind the back of your left leg and gently draw your legs towards your chest keeping your lower back long. You may like adding a gentle rock from side to side. 1 minute each side.

4. Quad Stretch. Lie on your belly with long legs. Make sure you line your self up in a straight line (not like a banana!). Bend one leg, bringing your heel towards your pelvis. Hold your ankle and direct your knee straight down. 1 min each side.

Hamstring Stretch

Figure Four

Quad Stretch

5. Hip Flexor Stretch. Stand vertically on your knees and step one foot forward into an upright lunge. Use your abdominals to lift your hip points and level your pelvis. Tuck your tail slightly and gently shift your aligned pelvis and spine forward into a stretch. 45 sec each side.

6. Straddle. Sit with your legs open to the sides like a large "V". If you cannot sit comfortably like this, sit up on a blanket or yoga blocks. Point your knees and toes up to the ceiling and have a very upright spine. If you are able, slowly tip your spine forward, hinging from your hips to move deeper into the stretch. 1 minute.

Hip Flexor Stretch

Straddle

7. Chest. Stand clasping your hands behind your pelvis. Reach your knuckles down towards the ground as your open the center of your chest to the sky. 30 seconds, and then switch the way your fingers are crossed. Repeat!

8. Neck. Here is a link to a series of neck stretches we think are fabulous for relieving neck tension. Trust us.

9. Breathe. Yes, again :).

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Links, articles and investigations - #hammies

Nerd alert! We 100% geek out on reading articles about muscles, firing patterns, fascia and anything that affects your practice all the time. We even have a running online Swan library for it. Check out these interesting reads that relate to hamstrings and check out the whole #hammies series. Get invested in understanding your body and your practice not to become a Pilates nerd, but to truly dig deep in changing, educating and evolving the way you move!

This article from Katy Says speaks to how using indoor cardio equipment affects your natural gait patterns. Remembering what you learned from Shorty's Healthy Hammies post about hip extension there's a lot to think about here. 

Since we are still pretty preoccupied with stretching our hamstrings- check out this good read from YogaDork that asks what the value of flexibility is with out the strength to support it. It's the second part of a two part series! If you dig it read the first section too! And just to really hammer that point home here's another post from Jules Mitchell about stretching -specifically your hamstrings. I can't think of another muscle we are more blindly obsessed with being "long"

Anatomy Trains includes your hammies in the Superficial Back Line. Here's a quick video from Brian Abelson about that line.

Hamstrings and balanced strength between your hammies and your quadriceps are super important for sports of all kinds. This post from The Science of Soccer talks about the roll of hamstring strength and fatigue in ACL load. This applies to any activity where cutting or switching directions quickly is required. 

Want more? Stay tuned to #articlesofinterest, #information and our Pinterest board(s) for more opportunities to nerd out and deepen you knowledge with us.

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#hammies - MOVE THEM THANGS!

Here are a few exercises to kick your hamstrings into gear!

A great warm-up is Pelvic Bridging. Start lying on you back with bent knees, feet in line with your sits bone. Find a nice, long, connected torso. In one movement, lift your pelvis off of the floor, towards the ceiling. Find the four corners of your feet, length through your back and try to stand with the tops of your hamstrings, right beneath your gluteal fold. To come down, soften your chest and try to sequence down, one vertebra at a time. Repeat 4-10 times!

Need to kick it up a notch? Bridge on the ball! The ball adds a big ol' stability challenge and makes the rest of your body work harder. Here Julia demonstrates turned-out straight-leg bridging on the physio ball! Try parallel and turned out  for variety, but also pay attention to what feels best for your hips and back!

Challenge your pelvic stability with Swimming Legs (AKA Leg Pull Front). Lie face down with your legs extended long underneath you. Connect to your breathing, your abdominals, and find supported elongation in your torso. Without shifting your hips, reach long through your right leg until it is all the way straight and you can feel the top of your hamstring working. Lift the leg slightly off of the floor from the top of your hamstring, not allowing your pelvis and spine to respond to the movement. Alternate side to side.

Get a great concentric engagement with Hamstring Curls! Still lying face down with long legs, hold a ball in between your ankles. Maintain the length through your spine and the fronts of your hips as you bend your knees, bringing your heels closer to your sits bones. Bend only as far as you can keep your hips and back long. For an extra challenge, perform the same movement but hover your legs off of the floor the whole time! 4 - 10 repetitions.

You deserve a Hamstring Stretch. Lie on your back with your legs long underneath you. Feel long and even in your back and pelvis. Draw one knee into your chest and loop a strap around your heel pocket. Place your bottom leg in a position that allows you to keep length in your torso and pelvis as you extend your stretching leg. Breathe and allow your hip socket to feel deeper. Try crossing your leg across your center or externally rotating your leg like you are turning a door handle open to the side. 45 sec - 1 min each side!

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Healthy Hammies

me: Hey Shorty, what are hamstring good for anyways?

Shorty: Well my friend, let me tell you a thing or two :). Your hamstrings have a few key functions in leg movement, as well as in stabilizing your knee and pelvis. Last week I laid the hamstrings out in anatomical detail, but today I will talk about them in pretty simple movement terms.  

An easy way to feel your hamstring working is doing an exercise like bridging. This movement is moving towards hip extension (aka moving your leg behind you). The hamstrings help with the first few degrees of hip extension in movements like walking, running, swimming etc. Exercises like bridging and swimming in Pilates can help you feel a strong contraction of the hamstrings.

Another healthy function of the hammies is to stabilize your pelvis. huh? 

Because parts of your hamstrings connect to your sits bones, the hamstrings can work to stabilize your pelvis bones.  When the muscles around your pelvis are in harmony, the hamstrings work to pull the sits bones earthbound, helping ground you! Conversely, if your hamstrings are unevenly developed right to left, they can unevenly pull on your pelvis and cause sacroiliac or back discomfort. If your hamstrings aren't firing well at all, you may be stressing the joints of your pelvis and lower back too much because it cannot stay solidly grounded.

Healthy hammies work to stabilize and flex (bend) your knees. Last week I showed how your hamstrings attach to either side of your knee, just below the joint. When your hamstrings are evenly developed, you will have a nice even gait and support from both sides of your leg. However, your knees are tricky. It is very easy for your lower leg to spin in or out. The hamstrings can help this by pulling on one side or the other. It is important to keep the inner part AND outer part of your hamstrings strong so that the force on your knee stays balanced! 

You must maintain even strength between the hamstrings and quadriceps. This balances the front and back forces on your hip, support of your knees, the relationship of your legs to your torso, and overall grounding to the earth. 

Many of us have slight imbalances with the way that we work our hamstrings - either one side is stronger than the other, one part of a hamstring dominates, one side is more flexible than the other, the hamstrings are much weaker than the quads etc. A lot of time hamstrings are forgotten when working on leg strength but they are SO important for finding balance in strength building and alignment. Always make sure to take the time to check in with them, strengthen them, stretch them, and use them to help you stay strong and grounded!

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Hamstrings

Shorty Swan here to help you understand your hamstrings. Let's talk about where they are and what they do. Stay tuned for #hammies posts with exercises and more! There's a lot to cover so let's jump right in. 

Your hamstrings are the set of three muscles that make up the back of your thigh. (Must admit they are one of Shorty's favorites!). All three hammies cross over the back of your knee joint and articulate your hip joint. This is important for understanding how they move your body and how to stretch them properly when they are tight. 

Let's do a roll call:

1. Biceps Femoris 2. Semitendinosus  3. Semimembranosus

Biceps Femoris

This hammie has a long head and a short head as it's name indicates. The long head originates at the ishcial tuberosity or sitz bone and the short head originates at the linea aspera which is a ridge located in the middle of the back of your femur or thigh bone. Both heads thread together, pass over the  back of the knee, and insert on the lower leg. The long head inserts on a lateral edge of the tibia and the short head inserts on the lateral head of the fibula.  (Some of you are very familiar with your sciatic nerve and should note it innervates both the long and short head of Biceps fem.)

What does my Biceps Femoris do? 

Great question. The long head acts on hip extension using it's attachment to the ischial tuberosity. Both heads act on knee flexion aka bending your knee. Because this hamstring is positioned laterally, it supports lateral rotation of the flexed knee or extended hip. 

Semitendinosus

Semitendinosus originates at the ischial tuberosity or sitz bones too, sharing a tendinous attachment with the Biceps Femoris.  Then it travels medially, or towards center line, and inserts on the inside front corner of the shaft of the tibia. 

What does it do?

With it's shared origin to Biceps Fem. comes shared function. Semitendinosus extends the hip and flexes the knee. However, due to its medial insertion it contributes to medial rotation of the knee or inward rotation. 

Semimembranosus

Semimembranosus originates at the ischial tuberosity. (Those ischia are a busy attachment site!) It continues down and inserts on the inside back corner of the shaft of the tibia. This is the most medial of your hamstrings meaning it sits closest to your midline.  Semimembranosus is deeper than Semitendinosus as well as  a bit wider 

What does it do?

Are you picking up the pattern ? :) Again Semimembranosus shares function where it shares attachment with it's hamstring neighbors. It acts on hip extension, knee flexion and medal rotation of the knee. 

When you think about the insertions of these three muscles on the inside and outside of your knee you can easily put together how balance, strength, stability and ROM for these #hammies plays into knee heath and stability. We will get further into healthy hamstring functions in another post!

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