Stretching Exercises

Stretching exercises for the hamstrings are important not only for dancers and fitness buffs but for everybody. These long large muscles that run from the sitting bones, to below your knees, need to be kept strong and stretched. Your general balance, reflexes, and sense of well being in your movements is increased when all your muscle groups are understood and cared for.

No Special Equipment Or Space Needed

You do not need any equipment, or special place to do an effective hamstring stretch. There are various ways to stretch out the backs of your thighs, but I am going to describe a simple stretch that you can do while or after walking, dancing, working out. And sometimes, after a long drive or sitting for a long time, it feels great to do this stretch and get the tension and stiffness out of your legs.

Understanding your muscle groups and learning how to stretch each area is not difficult. For example, about three minutes is needed to pause your work and stretch your neck, or shoulders, or forearm/hand areas. And the same for your legs and hip areas. If you would like to lose your muscles tension with simple movements, visit us to get your own guide for muscle stretching exercises.

Click right here for HAMSTRING STRETCHING EXERCISES and many more muscle stretches to increase flexibility.

In this engagingly interactive DVD, injury prevention specialist Deborah Vogel walks you through some of the most effective - and easy - stretching exercises, allowing you to enjoy the many benefits of stretching, and increase flexibility in all areas of your body.

Understanding the benefits of stretching is continually changing and adapting as new discoveries are made about the human body and its dynamics. This DVD illustrates the safest flexibility training so that you can learn easy daily stretching exercises - in the comfort of your own home or office.

You will see and understand:

a piriformis stretch, one of the hip stretches
a psoas muscle stretch
a hamstring stretch
neck stretches
shoulder stretches
back stretches
calf stretches
wrist stretches - carpal tunnel stretches

And you will see how to release muscle tension with a Pinky ball - a wonderful massage technique.

A while ago when I wrote an article about office space workouts I was astounded at the high number of times it was read. I was aware that many recreational adult ballet dancers sit on a chair all day, or do some other repetitive or physically confining work. These are good daily stretching exercises to increase flexibility .

Read the full article HERE.

Get yourself The Ultimate Stretching Guide and get the benefits of stretching.

Wrist and hand pain can result when you type all day long. Or, play a concert piano, do hairstyles or retain tension from any activity. What makes this worse is if you work with poor posture - looking down (to any degree) at a computer monitor, slumping in the low back, and letting your chest cave in, suppressing proper breathing. This leads to decreased ranges of motion in your neck, shoulder, spine, forearm and wrist areas.

Repetitive stress, resulting in hand pain and wrist pain, can be prevented and soothed by understanding the connective tissues of the body, and how to take care of them.

The entire body is connected by fascia, a tissue covering all the soft tissues. Typically, the scalp muscles and the muscles right under the skull and top of the neck, will retain tension from nothing more than incorrect posture, and this tension will travel down the body.

Add athletic training, hours at a desk, or any repetitive motion, and chronic pain will result.

It is not a good idea to ignore pain or just take over the counter pain relievers. Seeing a chiropractor or a physio therapist, for treatment and to learn some home care, will bring pain relief and re-train your habits.

Also, getting a stretching guide from an experienced professional for home use will help you get pain relief. Not only will it relieve tension that is causing a pinched-nerve situation, resulting in muscle or joint pain, but establishing a routine in stretching will increase circulation and promote a general feeling of well being.

If you have any sharp or deep pain of any kind, be sure to consult a health practitioner.

If you have mild aches and pains that are becoming increasingly noticeable, learn some stretches that will likely relieve them. Also, check your posture at work (or play, walking, running, etc.,).

We do not always know how much we can improve our muscle and soft tissue condition through learning proper daily stretching. Yet, simple routines can make a lot of difference. Increasing muscle tone through tension release, and decreasing the need for drugs is a positive direction to take. Learn gentle resistance stretching the easy way and experience muscular pain relief.

The hamstring is a big muscle at the back of the thigh. It must be strengthened to ensure that it is not dominated by the strength of the quadriceps at the front of the thigh, causing imbalance in the body structure. If the quadriceps muscle is much stronger that the hamstrings, which is commonly the case, it can pull on the hamstring muscle and cause injuries.

Other imbalances such as the misalignment of the pelvis can also lead to extra tension in the hamstrings. Chiropractic care is a necessary routine for would-be ballerinas, men in ballet, cheer leaders and work-out buffs.

Patience to warm up before training and work outs, and then afterward, to cool down with resistance stretching, (meaning not in a rush, not when your mind is already focusing on something else), is extremely important for the hamstring. It is a large muscle with a plentiful blood supply that is capable of creating substantial inflammation and scar tissue once the muscle is pulled.

Growth spurts can cause imbalances as well, resulting in temporary loss of balance, flexibility and strength.

Without understanding these factors, well-trained and serious ballet students will struggle to work harder, endure a little more pain, and may become very frustrated when the expected optimum results don't show up. They might feel that they should be adding some cross training or more ballet classes. However, this will only irritate the hamstring injury.

Once a hamstring is pulled, and on the mend, stretching to do the splits should only be done after use of the pinky ball on the hamstrings, quads, gluts and even calves (why not while you're at it). And of course after a full class when you are at your warmest. Then stretch to feel a stretch, not to feel pain.

It's often a month or two after a hamstring pull, that the muscle will feel well again, with the best of care. With no special treatment, the muscle will be unwell, with the condition possibly lingering for months. With stretching exercises and relaxation techniques, you can learn a simple full-body stretch routine which will result in tension release from the scalp down, helping to prevent a hamstring injury, and muscle spasms.

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