Hamstring Stretches For Lower Back Pain

A lot of people have tight hamstrings and sometimes those hamstrings can

contribute to lower back pain. But then it might hurt to stretch the hamstrings

because of the lower back pain, so I'm going to show you a safe way that you

can get it all done. Hey I'm Dr. Sten Ekberg with Wellness For Life and by

subscribing to our channel you will learn everything that you need to know

to master true health. A lot of people want to stretch their hamstrings but

then when they sit down on the floor and try to stretch them they find that their

back hurts. So how can you stretch it safely without aggravating anything?

I'm going to show you something you can do at home we're going to talk about the

hamstring muscles and show you how to do it. I'm gonna use a couple of boxes here

and you could use a kitchen table or anything that's appropriate height for

you you want to start kind of carefully and then you can work your way up so a

lot of people when they sit down and they try to stretch then they're back

rounds out they put a lot of strain on their lower back so you want to do the

stretch standing up and let me show you right here and by doing this now you're

maintaining your normal spinal curves and then when you lean forward to

stretch toward toward the leg you don't want to round your back out again you

want to keep your chest up maintain your lumbar curve and then carefully lean

forward so it doesn't look like I'm stretching a whole lot here but it is a

tremendous stretch actually I could easily round out my back and reach the

toe but this is less of a stretch on the hamstring then this is now there's two

main hamstring groups one runs on the inside from here up to the pelvis and

one runs on the other side from the knee up to the pelvis so by adjusting your

hip position you can emphasize one more or the

so if I want to stretch the outside I'm gonna turn my hip over toward that

direction so I'm gonna close the hip down and now when I stretch I stretch

almost entirely on the outside if I want to stretch the inside I open up the hip

so that my foot is facing about 45 degrees out and now when I lean I'm

stretching mostly on the inside so then of course you want to alternate and do

both sides equally you maintain your posture you carefully lean forward and

there you have a wonderful stretch now step two you want to add a little bit

more to this so instead of just holding the stretch you want to add a

contraction this is what's called a PNF or proprioceptive neuromuscular

facilitation so now I'm gonna get into my stretch I'm going to hold it for

about ten seconds and then I'm gonna push the heel down into the support so

you're not going to see any motion because this is what's called a static

contraction but I'm starting to push that heel down so there is a pretty

strong contraction and I'm maintaining it and you want to hold that for about

ten maybe fifteen seconds then you relax the muscle and then you lean another

couple of inches and you hold that again for 10-15 seconds

so here's a wonderful way that you can get a tremendous efficient hamstring

stretch and put absolutely no strain on your low back so let me show you the

stretch again straight from the side so you can see exactly what it looks like

and I'm going to start with the hips facing forward turning the hips forward

and then I'm stretching the lateral the outside part of the hamstring the most

and I am keeping my posture upright I'm maintaining my arch in the back and then

I'm leaning forward and the better you keep that arch in the low back the more

the stronger that stretch of the hamstring is so even though it doesn't

look like much of a stretch I'm getting a tremendous stretch here so again we

would stretch for 10 push down for 10 relax for 10 and go a little further

okay now let's show with your other leg okay upright lean forward

and then if we're going to do the inside now I'm turning I'm opening up my hip so

that I'm getting a 90 45 to 90 degree angle on that foot and now you can even

stretch sideways like this if you like and now we're getting a only a stretch

on the inside you could turn a 45 degree and go a little bit in between and you

can do all the angles in between then you're really getting to every portion

of that hamstring muscle it's a perfectly safe stretch even if you have

low back pain because you're taking the low back out of it completely let me

know how that works for you I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions

or suggestions don't forget to leave comments down below and hit that

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for today