Top 4 Reasons Hamstrings Get Tight And Cause Back And Knee Pain

In this video I’m going to tell you the top four reasons why hamstrings get tight and cause back and knee pain. tight hamstrings are a nuisance for people suffering from back and knee problems because back and knee problems are very related to each other, and the hamstrings are a connection between the two.

That means hamstrings can have a direct influence on a back problem, as well as a direct influence on a knee problem. So if you feel that your hamstrings are tight, then you’re going to have a back or knee problem eventually. So let me tell you reason number one, weak abdominals lead to tight hamstrings. So the abdominal muscles are right here in the front of the body.

Between the ribcage and the pelvis bone, they connect to the two areas and they have direct connections to the entire rim of the pelvis bone, the edges of the ribcage right here and they send tendons into the lower back.

So if abdominals are weak, they could be affecting a back problem and as a result of that, a compensation that you might experience is tight hamstring muscles down here and let me tell you why weak abdominals are directly related to hamstring tightness hamstrings attached right here on the sit bone.

We call this the sit bone. It’s called the ischial tuberosity. In the medical world, it’s the bottom of this big pelvis bone. But when you sit down in a chair, as long as you’re sitting upright, you’re going to be sitting on these bones. If you start to lean backwards in this whole pelvis will tilt backwards and to put more pressure on the tailbone.

The right here where the sit bones are or where the hamstrings attach up close to the body and then they run down and attach into the shin bone on the on the sides of the shin bone right here. So they crossed the hip joint and the knee joints. But the main reason the connection I want to make for you, when abdominals right here on the front are weak because of their connection to the abdominal to the ribcage up here and the pelvis bone in the front right here.

When abdominal muscles get weak, they start to stretch out they eat elongate, they get longer, which causes what’s called an anterior pelvic tilt. This pelvis bone starts to tilt forward because the dominance can pull the front end of it up. And that forward tilt LIS the sits bones right here it elevates the hamstring attachment. So this part goes up giving a stretch to those hamstrings, causing hamstring tightness.

So if you can get your abdominal muscles stronger and create a what we call the posterior pelvic tilt to get your pelvis to begin to tip backwards, then it takes away some of the stretch on the hamstrings. This anterior pelvic tilt we’ve talked about in other videos here and how it directly influences back problems.

It pinches joints here in the in the spine, it pinches the nerves in the spine. It can set up back arthritis disc herniations in the long term, but hamstring tightness is a common symptom of those weak abdominal muscles and many back problems. Reason number two weak glutes lead to hamstrings getting tight as well, because the hamstrings are in the back side of the body.

So just to be clear, in case I haven’t been already hamstrings are right here on the back of the thigh bone, and they are right below the glute muscles. So glute muscles are right here, obviously and then hamstrings go right below. So on the skeleton here, glutes would be right here and then the hamstrings would be attaching right below running towards the knee joint down here.

Because the hamstrings are neighbors to the glute muscles and they’re on the backside of the body and they both they cross the hip joint technically. So both of these muscles can affect the hip joint by creating what’s called the extension. Extension is a motion where the hip joint is moving backwards like this. So on my body would look like this. This is hip extension right here, versus flexion is going forward this way.

So when you do hip extension, you should primarily be using the glute muscle, but you can compensate with hamstring muscles. So if your glute muscles are weak, and you’re doing some activity that requires you to be doing hip extension like walking like when you’re taking steps, the leg that goes back behind you has to extend a bit. There’s stair climbing as well.

When you take a step up and you push yourself your hip has to go through extension in order to get yourself up onto the steps. everyday normal motions require extension. It’s a very common activity, but it should technically be glute dominance. And if it’s not because your glutes are weak, then you’re going to possibly become a hamstring dominance, which means your hamstrings are likely to feel tight hamstrings because of their position in the body and the way that attach the attach to the sit bone right here and down to the knee should not be primary hip extensors.

That’s not their main job. Their main job is to control knee motion how Fast do extends your knee. And they work together with the quadricep muscles on the front of the thigh right here to do that, so their primary job is really to control the knee not to extend the hip. So if they’re working as a primary hip extensor because glutes are pure or weak, then you’re going to have problems with a hamstring.

Reason number three is overuse quadricep muscles in the front of the thigh, that tends to cause tight hamstrings on the back of the thigh. This is related to my second reason. And when the quads get overused quads in the front of the muscle, quads in the front of the thigh right here, when they’re overdeveloped, or they’re overused, I talk about on this channel very often how that leads to knee problems and back problems.

Those quads work together with the hamstrings. So in order to decelerate or slow down your knee extension, which is the motion that your quads help out with tremendously, your hamstrings have to control it. And the best analogy that I can give you is if you think about horseback riding, like if you’re riding a horse and you’re holding the reins to a horse, there’s those reins are attached to the bit that goes in the horse’s mouth.

 And the horse is trained so that when you pull the right rein, it pulls the bit over to the right turns a horse’s head to the right, and makes the horse turn its body to the right, so you can go in that direction. And same thing happens when you pull the left rein it turns the horse to the left. Well, the hamstrings the way they attach, they come in from the from the sit bone back here, right below the glute.

And then they go two different directions depending on which muscle you’re talking about. And the attached to the bottom part of the knee joint on the sides, not directly on the back. So it’s very much like the way the reins go out to the bit on a horse’s mouth. And depending on the hamstring muscle that you’re using, you can make the knee move in this direction, this direction with the hamstring. So when you move your knee in and out that helps to control your knee motion.

Now, this is where it gets a little bit hairsplitting for people, because a lot of people say the hamstrings are knee flexors. In other words, they help you to bend your knee. But I actually say there need the accelerators and their controllers of motion. Because think about it. Here’s my reason for this.

How often do you have to forcefully flex your knee? I mean, this kind of motion, like how often do you have to pick up your heel and make it work like that with a lot of force so that you get this muscle to activate. I mean, there’s rare instances I can imagine just like putting pants on or something where you’re having to pick up your leg, but you’re not putting pants on all day.

It’s not like walking or stair climbing. So there really isn’t many opportunities for you throughout the day. Normally, to bend your knee like that, there’s going to be exceptions, there’s going to be people out there that are doing certain tasks or activities where they may bend their knee quite a bit. But those are the exception. It’s not the norm.

If you’re just a person who just walks around to do your daily activities, you do your house chores, you go to work, maybe you sit for an office job, maybe you’re even active in your job, you’re standing a lot having a walk having to pick up things of considerable weight, you’re probably not going to have to bend your knee back like this with force on a consistent basis.

That being said, there is no reason to get super strong hamstrings. And if the hamstrings work with the quads, then there’s also no big reason to get very strong quads. In normal strengthening when you have proper strength through your quad muscles. Your hamstrings just naturally get as strong as your quad muscles is strong enough to control the quad muscles. As long as you’re moving correctly and strengthening properly.

Hamstrings just shouldn’t be a primary hip extensor sleeve. They don’t need to be trained that way. The fourth reason for tightness in your hamstrings is sciatica. If you’ve been dealing with sciatica, especially if you’ve got a back problem where your nerves are getting pinched. If you have pain in the glute area and it runs down near the back of your leg, maybe even all the way down into your calf and foot.

You might have sciatica. We’ve got a video playlist for sciatica, go check that out in the description below. But if you have been dealing with sciatica, then your hamstrings might feel very tight. And the main reason for that is that that sciatic nerve runs right through here. It bunches up from these nerves in the front, and they all bundled together into that big giant sciatic nerve that runs right through this notch.

This is called the greater sciatic notch of the ilium bone. And then it runs down the back of your leg right here, right under the hamstrings. So when you touch your hamstrings back here, if you go deep right between them, that is where the sciatic nerve runs, and the hamstring muscles are innervated they receive nerve innervation from the sciatic nerve.

So if your sciatic nerve is irritated somehow, whether it’s coming from the spine up here or the edge of the pelvis bone or here because you can get a shift in this bone, and your sciatic nerve is not happy, it’s kind of angry right now, then there’s a high likelihood that it’s going to make your hamstrings want to fire want to tense up. And if you use your legs too much, it might even cause your hamstring muscles to cramp.

That uncomfortable cramp sensation that you get while you’re lying in bed trying to go to sleep or just sitting around or sometimes if you’re being more active than usual, you may cramp up as well, if you’ve been getting consistent cramping, you know, once a week, twice a week, maybe even once a day.

If it’s more frequent than that, then you probably have developed tight hamstrings because your poor hamstring muscles have just been seizing up on a consistent basis because of that sciatica problem.

So you’ve got to treat the sciatica problem in this case in order to get those hamstring muscles to calm down. And you could have a combination of all the things that I’ve mentioned here, you could have weak abdominals, you could have weak glutes you could have over dominant quads and a sciatica problem on top of that, in which case you would have to make sure you address piece by piece in order to get your hamstrings to calm down, loosen up and not be tight anymore.

Hope this video is brought some clarity to you on a why hamstrings get tight. If you have questions drop them in the comments below. Don’t forget to like our video. And if you haven’t yet, subscribe we make videos to help people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. I’ll catch you in the next video. Bye