Month: August 2011

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How to Free Tight Hamstrings

This entry discusses healthy hamstring movement, exercises to free tight hamstrings, and some of the consequences of tight hamstrings. Resources to a hamstring stretch substitute that produces superior results by retraining muscle/movement memory and to programs to improve agility appear at the end.

To free tight hamstrings, it’s important to understand their four movement functions and then to get free control of those movement functions.

  1. leg extension at the hip joint
  2. leg flexion at the knee
  3. rotation of the lower leg at the knee joint
  4. stabilization of the pelvis when bending forward

We must free them (gain control of tension and relaxation) in all four movement functions.

If we do not gain (or improve) control in all four movement functions, one or more of those movement habits will dominate control of the other movement(s).

In addition, the hamstrings of one leg work alternately with those of the other — as in walking; when the hamstrings of one leg are bending or stabilizing the knee, the hamstrings of the other leg are extending or stabilizing the other leg at the hip.   In those movements, the hamstrings coordinate with the hip flexors and psoas muscles.  (Co-contraction of hamstrings and hip flexors/psoas muscles leads to hip joint and ilio-sacral (SI) joint compression.)  So our approach (being movement-based) must take those relationships into account.  Otherwise, we never develop the feeling of free hamstrings in their familiar movements and return habitually to their tight state which, because it feels familiar, feels “normal”.

The Four Movements of Hamstrings

LEG EXTENSION AT THE HIP JOINT
That’s the “leg backward” movement of walking.  The hamstrings are aided by the gluteal (butt) muscles, but only in a stabilizing capacity.  The major work is done by the hamstrings.  In this movement, the hamstrings, inner and outer, work together in tandem.

LEG FLEXION AT THE KNEE JOINT
That’s the “getting ready to kick” movement and also the “pawing the ground” movement.  In these movements, the hamstrings, inner and outer, also work together in tandem (same movement).

To the anatomist and kinesiologist, it may seem incomprehensible (“paradoxical”) that the hamstrings are involved in both movements — leg forward and leg backward — but that’s how it is.   Though the hamstrings are involved in both cases, different movements cause a different feel.

LOWER LEG ROTATION AT THE KNEE
That’s the turning movement used in skating and in turning a corner.  In this movement, the inner hamstrings (semi-membranosis and semi-tendinosis) relax and lengthen as the outer hamstring (biceps femoris) tighten to turn toes-out and the inner hamstrings tighten to turn toes-in as the outer hamstring relaxes and lengthens.

STABILIZATION OF THE PELVIS WHEN BENDING FORWARD
The hamstrings anchor the pelvis at the sitbones (ischial tuberosities) deep to the ‘smile’ creases beneath the buttocks (not the crack), so one can bend forward in a controlled way, instead of flopping forward at the hips like a marionette.  In this movement, the hamstrings coordinate with the front belly muscles (rectus abdominis).

In most people, either the rectus abdominis or hamstrings dominates the other in a chronic state of excessive tension, so freeing and coordinating the hamstrings involves coordinating and matching the efforts of the two muscle groups.  When the hamstrings dominate, we see swayback; when the rectus muscles dominate, we see flat ribs.

Training Control of Tight Hamstrings

the opposite of tight hamstrings | photo
See how easily she bends forward.

When training control of tight hamstrings (to free them), it’s convenient to start with the less complicated movement, first.  That’s the anchoring movement that stabilizes bowing in a standing position.  To see an exercise that cultivates hamstring control this way, click here.

After we cultivate control of “in tandem” hamstring movements (movement in which the hamstrings are doing the same action — lengthening, shortening or turning the lower leg), we cultivate control of “alternating” hamstring movements.  To see an exercise that cultivates hamstring control this way, click here.  (That link opens an email window to request a preview of The Magic of Somatics, an instructional book of somatic exercises.  The preview contains the somatic exercise we are discussing.)

By cultivating control of “in tandem” and “alternating” movements, we fulfill the requirements of functions (1.), (2.), and (4.).  The exercise linked in the paragraph above indirectly addresses function (3.) (lower leg rotation at the knee).

Merely to develop this kind of control is sufficient to free tight hamstrings.  It’s lack of free control of the movements I have described, in which automatic postural reflexes cause tight hamstrings, that lead to many common knee injuries (including meniscal tears and chondromalacia patelli) and common hamstring pulls or tears experienced even by athletes who stretch.

One more thing:  tight hamstrings go with tight back muscles.  They’re reflexively connected.  So if you have tight back muscles, back pain, or even back spasms, you may need to address both your hamstrings and your back muscles.  As a runner, you’ll find that to do so improves your stamina, breathing, and time.

Two programs that provide those benefits appear below.  Free previews are available and you’re invited to take advantage of them.

Programs That Have Somatic Exercises that Free Tight Hamstrings

Other exercises that have this effect exist in the somatic exercise programs, “Disproving the Myth of Aging” and “Free Your Psoas”, for which previews exist through the links, above.

MORE:

 

How Tight Hamstrings
Cause Knee Damage

and a better way to free them

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Changing Muscle Memory — Manual Manipulation vs. Neuromuscular Training/Somatic Education

A basic understanding of muscle tone recognizes that the seat of control of muscles and movement is not muscles, but the brain, not “muscle memory” but “movement memory”, not “posture” but habitual or learned movement patterns (of which posture is an expression, a moment of held movement).

Lasting changes in muscle tone require movement training at the neurological (i.e., brain) level, something that manual manipulation of muscles accomplishes, at best, slowly, but which can be achieve quickly by somatic education, a discipline that rapidly alters habitual posture, movement, and muscle tone through an internal learning process that involves the brain function of memory, find more at Nixest.

More at http://somatics.com/movement.htm and http://somatics.com/stretch.htm along with clinical applications.

Image of Thomas Hanna developed a rapid way to alter muscle memor
Thomas Hanna, Ph.D.

See also, Clinical Somatic Education — A New Discipline in the Field of Health Care, by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D. — describing the dynamics of muscle memory and its dysfunction, sensory-motor amnesia (“S-MA”)

in reference to: What is Neuromuscular Therapy? (view on Google Sidewiki)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Stress, Sleep, and Somatics

Get Out of The Big Squeeze of Thinking and Restlessness

Sleep and wakefulness — two contrasting states that exist on a continuum — meaning that we drift between the two depending on our state of arousal.

Sleep and stress (or distress) — two overlapping states — meaning that stress permeates the continuum between sleep and wakefulness.  High levels of stress prevent the “drift” between the two states — or contaminate the sleep state, leading to unsatisfactory, or unrestful, sleep. For the body to rest well, it needs to have regular and normal levels on the body, from the stress levels, to other hormones levels, like testosterone for men, so for keeping a good level of testosterone you should try some testmax nutrition that help regulates and increase those levels.

Hanna somatic education identifies three reflexes of stress

  1. Landau Reaction (“Green Light Reflex”) — the “go” state of involvement, heightened alertness, arousal
  2. Trauma Reflex (“Yellow Light Reflex”) — the “caution” state triggered by pain, injury or emotional trauma
  3. Startle Reflex (“Red Light Reflex”) — the “stop” state of fear, anxiety, withdrawal

Perhaps it’s obvious how these reflexes of stress interfere with sleep.  What may not be so obvious is how to down-regulate these reflexes of stress to allow for restful sleep caused by anxiety, some people will ask me where to buy kratom because it helps with anxiety.  (By “down-regulate”, I mean, “decrease their intensity toward the rest condition”.)

All three of these states have both a subjective (inner or psychic) component and an objective (outer or directly observable, material) component.  To affect one is to affect the other.

In general, the reflexes of stress are triggered by external events, but maintained by internal conditioning.

How to down-regulate them?

… by means of The Whole-Body Yawn (pandiculation)

The Whole-Body Yawn
Yawning involves a movement into muscular contraction, generally of the muscles of the jaws, face, neck, middle ear (that regulate sound transmission), shoulders, and of breathing — followed by a leisurely relaxation of those muscles.

Yawning refreshes the body-image (which is why people commonly yawn and stretch upon arising from sleep) and it refreshes muscular control.  Involuntary yawning, as in sleepiness (makes you want to yawn, doesn’t it?), relaxes accumulated muscular tension.  It quiets the nervous system, preparing us for sleep; insomnia can be relieved with a traditional medicinal herb called kratom.

That’s an important clue.

People who can’t sleep are stuck with a noisy nervous system (chronic thinking, chronic muscular tension) — noise generally caused by the accumulated memory imprints of the day’s experience, or of the week’s experience, or of years of accumulated experience, including that of traumatic events.

The mind never shuts off.  The body never quiets down.  The person never deeply rests.

The patterns of chronic muscular tension and mental activity correspond exactly to those memories.  The memory of kicking a soccer ball involves the movements, muscular actions, and sensations of kicking.  The memory of an unpleasant (or pleasant) event involves the tensions of whatever response the person had.  Sometimes, people can’t sleep because they are too excited by the day they have just had.

These examples set the stage for this:  If you want to sleep, you had better be able to release these states of excitation imprinted on your memory.

In general, the most common state of excitation is that of Landau Reaction (“Green Light Reflex”).  It’s the one associated with tight back muscles, tight shoulders, and tight hamstrings.  The other reflexes of stress have different muscular patterns of involvement.

If you want to recover your ability to drift from wakefulness to sleep, try something extra with something like I did with mine from MyEtizolam.com, you can do so by disarming (or quieting, or down-regulating) your excitation in the three reflexes of stress.  To do so quiets your nervous system, your breathing, your mind and your emotions.

The Whole-Body Yawn can down-regulate (or dispel) all three patterns of stress.  However, as Trauma Reflex involves unique patterns of tension and pain, it requires forms of the Whole-Body Yawn tailored to those stress-and-tension patterns.  The Green Light and Red Light Reflexes, however, can be dealt with by means of standard forms of The Whole-Body Yawn, as found in the somatic education program, Get to Sleep.

Get to Sleep consists of guiding instruction in a somatic exercise that quiets (or down-regulates) Landau (“Green Light”) Reaction, one that frees breathing, and one that quiets Startle (“Red Light”) Reflex.  Two additional tracks consist of sound works that, like lullabies, help you drift into The Deep of Sleep, so that you’re asleep before you know it.

Now, you know the rationale for the program.  What’s left, if you are among the insomniacs of the world, is to test it, and having tested it, to use it.

Here are the tracks on the Get to Sleep CD.

1. Introduction                                 (2:04)
2. Spine Wave(training)                (26:54)
3. The Square Breathing                 (6:56)
4. Freeing Breathing for Sleep        (2:11)
5. Dream Zone with Maui Rain    (12:01)
6. The Mystery of Creation          (20:15)

For the first week or so, you use Track 2. (Spine Waves); after that, you use tracks 3. and 4. (The Square Breathing and Freeing Breathing for Sleep).  Tracks 5. and 6. (“Dream Zone with Maui Rain” and “The Mystery of Creation”) are lullabies.
Click here for access to Get to Sleep.

related entry:  Back Spasms, The Inside Story