One year of no hamstrings flexibility progress. Please help.

Hi everyone,

I reallly need help and advise. I will introduce for all of you my problem. I have a herniated disc in L5-S1 since 2012 which caused me sciatic pain in my right leg and lower back pain. I m not feeling any more sciatic pain for very long already and also my back feels good. I ve been training FS, MS and Foundation for a year already. My whole right hip area is super tight and way much tighter than the left for sure. Although I dont feel any more pain in the back of my leg I still have a sciatic nerve sensation, not painfull at all, but I know its the nerve. I don t feel anything in the other leg.

Since I started one year ago to strecth and all the mobility I was always very sore in my right hamstring after MS, FS and MN Mobility. I want to make clear that I don t get sore in any other muscle from stretching and I also don t get sore in my left hamstring. Only right hamstring and at the beginning I felt sore during 2 days after. Then I decided to drop the intensity and also a bit the quantity ( I m not doing the whole series) and with that change I was always sore for one day after only. But I have to be super careful to not over do it or I get a really bad soreness feeling. If other stretches I push to a 4-5 of intensity, I stretch my hammies only to a 2-3 maximum and less. GST is full of hamstring stretches: MS, FS, HS2 and MN progressions. So that means I had to organize all my training taking into account my hamstring recovery and many weeks I couldn t get all the 4 because I was still recovering.

When I strecht my hammies the feeling in my right one is not "normal". To be honest I think I feel the nerve been stretched. So, getting to the point, after one year stretching my hammies and quads I haven t seen any progress at all, I don t have a picture from the beginning, but I remember how much I was able to pike with apt and it was the same. I even think that my flexibility could have get worse. Also i progressed a bit on my quads and hip flexors flexibility and i regressed when I had 1 month of lower back pain. I m starting to feel very frustrated because I have worked a lot on it.

Because of all that I have decided to change my approach for some time to suit my personal needs. I thought about stretching my hamstrings and quads absolutely everyday but less time, around 3-4 minutes, instead of doing the whole series. I will still do the first half of MS and FS that does not work on hamstring and also TB. And I will do the stiff leg windmill unweighted because it leaves me very sore even with very little weight. I hope you coaches can give me advice on that. Maybe I can progress faster this way because when I get sore I feel I regress.

Or do you maybe know some specific exercise? Just before you recommend me to see a physio, hehe, I ve been to many of them and as a general rule, here in Spain if there is no pain there is no problem. Nevertheless I ve met with Wesley Tan and I know his approach to heal a herniated disc is GST and I have also been training with Everett in Flagstaff to make sure my technique was good, so I don t think it s a poor technical problem.

I have attached a pic of my pike and pancake with apt. In both pics I m really pushing to my maximum. When I see other people pike or pancake I simply can t believe I am still so inflexible after one year.

Anything that you think could help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Hi Antonio, when muscles are stretched you are creating a load and the body needs to compensate. the problem it is when the muscles are weak. Usually, in my clients I see very few progress in people who are basically weak. probably a specific additional work to increase the hamstring flexibility it is the solution.

7 hours ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

Hi Antonio, when muscles are stretched you are creating a load and the body needs to compensate. the problem it is when the muscles are weak. Usually, in my clients I see very few progress in people who are basically weak. probably a specific additional work to increase the hamstring flexibility it is the solution.

Hi Alessandro, what kind of additional hamstring work do you suggest? Do you recommend me me that I keep working on the whole strecht series? Then aditional strecht won t be possible. And how it s strenght related to this?

Sorry Antonio, I apologize, I mean muscles strength!

15 minutes ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

Sorry Antonio, I apologize, I mean muscles strength!

I imagined that. Not any specific recommendations or if my approach of stretching less per day but more days a week is good? 

 @Alessandro Mainente @Antonio Alías Montoya Great discussion guys.

Alessandro if you dont mind to dig abit deeper, whats your perferred exercise and/or method to strengthen hamstrings? 

Would you recommend doing some hamstring strength prior to Front split series? Like a warm up/light conditioning or activation?

I m not sure if he means hamstring strenght or strenght in general. I guess good hamstring strenght exercises are bridge leg curl for example and all F3 SLS Mobility. 

We are talking about posterior chain so:

-calves

-hamstring

-glutes 

Are you following the foundations?

@Alessandro Mainente yes, I m following Foundation, but still on Deck Squats due to lack of ankle mobility. I m just working some extra Cossack Squats. The only calves strenght I work is from Front Split and I m not working on any hamstring strenght exercise. Should I consider adding some more advance mobility?

And my right posterior chain is probably very weak because of the long time I had sciatic some years ago. Is possible to see just by eye how my right calf and hamstring is smaller, specially calf.

The simplest exercise you can do from a standing position it is to lift your straight legs on the back (like kicking something behind you) with no twist at the hips. you should aim for 1 hundred perfect rep.

Thanks, I ll try this and see how it goes.

Alessandro: on those backwards kicks/ leg raises — should the torso remain perfectly upright or is a little pike at the hip ok?

thanks

craig

Hi Antonio, 

One thing I do everyday is a standing two minute pike. No matter time of day I always do it. I have actually build up to a five minute standing pike everyday, sounds crazy but it has been a huge help. Send us some progress photos.

40 minutes ago, Tanya Hill said:

Hi Antonio, 

One thing I do everyday is a standing two minute pike. No matter time of day I always do it. I have actually build up to a five minute standing pike everyday, sounds crazy but it has been a huge help. Send us some progress photos.

Thanks Tanya. I just started doing it this week and I feel great.

For a long long time, I didn't make much progress simply stretching my hamstrings.  My hamstrings were particularly tight because of a past ACL surgery.  I've tried foam rolling, using massage stick, even gotten multiple massages from licensed massage therapists.  Those weren't effective too so I thought that fascia restrictions wasn't the problem for me.  However, one day, I sat down on a chair, placed a lacrosse ball under my hamstrings, and while placing as much as bodyweight as possible on my hamstrings, I did knee extensions.  I did that in as many areas of my hamstrings as I could.  It was painful and I heard loud crunching sounds multiple times.  When I was done, I did a standing pike and was pretty damn shocked at how easy it was

Love that idea Alan, thank you for sharing. I will definitely try it. 

Hi again everybody! Finally things are getting better with my hamstring flexibility. This is exactly my 5 months progress: 

nice progress!!

And now that s what I did to improve it. I completely stopped doing all the mobility that was leaving me sore for days even with no weight, so that means stiff leg windmill and also I stopped doing the whole front split series at once. I started by stretching my hamstrings very ofently at a very very soft intensity in the pike position placing my hands on the couch. At the begining  i was stretching them everyday for around 5 minutes. I realized that the feeling of my muscles were so tight that i shouldn t strecht them very hard or too much. So this way of stretching at a lower intensity but more time under strecht was better for me at thethe point i was because it was the only way to relaxed my muscles. I also decided to to strecht only to the point to don t be sore at all the  next day, so i learn how much and how hard i can push without soreness next day. After a month i started stretching more but on alternate days. After about 3 months tightness started to dissapear and I added more variety and intensity of stretches and more rest as well. This has changed my approach to strecht and has made me step waaay back on my strecht to be able to be completely relaxed into them, breathing and feeling tightness leaving your body. Stretching has become one of the most pleasurable experience in my life, like some sort of meditation.

Great to hear and see  youre finding ways to more flexble Antonio, keep it up!

Hi Antonio, great work! You mentioned that you sometimes get the feeling that you are stretching the nerve. You might want to give the nerve gliding exercises on this page a try: https://www.thegapphysio.com.au/blog/2017/2/28/get-a-leg-up-on-sciatica-by-trying-these-nerve-glides

Nerves are normally able to slide when you move (within certain limits, of course). If you feel as if a nerve is being stretched, it is possible that the nerve is limited in its range of motion.

You can find many other exercises online. Good luck!

53 minutes ago, Michaël Van den Berg said:

Hi Antonio, great work! You mentioned that you sometimes get the feeling that you are stretching the nerve. You might want to give the nerve gliding exercises on this page a try: https://www.thegapphysio.com.au/blog/2017/2/28/get-a-leg-up-on-sciatica-by-trying-these-nerve-glides

Nerves are normally able to slide when you move (within certain limits, of course). If you feel as if a nerve is being stretched, it is possible that the nerve is limited in its range of motion.

You can find many other exercises online. Good luck!

Thanks Michael! I ll give this a try!

There's a famous old school stretching book, called "Stretching". The base concept in the beginning if the book was that the focus of stretching shouldn't be to lengthen the body, but to actually learn to relax, which would then allow you to lengthen. That it's better to stretch intuitively than for set time. Seems like you learned this lesson through experience: ) That's awesome dude