Yoga for Cyclists part 8: Hamstrings
Simply close your eyes and inwardly focus on the backs of your legs
Yoga 8
How often do you close your eyes and inwardly focus on the backs of your legs? We're saying you should be doing it a whole lot more often.
As we discussed in Yoga for Cyclists part 7, tight hamstrings can affect the posture, pulling the pelvis out of alignment, so care of the hamstrings is essential to everyday wellbeing, and to protecting the joints during training.
Resident Road.cc yoga expert Karen Burt shows us two hamstring exercises, one that's designed if you have a bit of a bad back, or not.
The aim for the more flexible of back is to lean forward as if touching the toes - but they key is to relax into the movement, rather than stretch or push into it.
The less flexible can do an exercise that involves lying on the back, pulling the knees in and relaxing the hamstrings.
For the full series of Yoga for Cyclists videos click here.
Poor chap cannot even sit comfortably on the ground due to tight hamstrings. If you watch the first section his back is entirely rounded as he sits on the ground with his legs straight. This is due to short hamstrings and probably tightness around the hip capsule.
Unfortunately I didn't do myself any favours from doing the straight leg stretch due to similar tightness in my back. I strained my disc as a result. If you have similar back issues, or sciatic nerve pain, it would probably be better to avoid that stretch as it stretches the nerve as much as anything. Try some 'nerve sliders', which will help to stop the nerve catching and move more easily through your tissue.
I'm the same re hamstrings, and that's despite years of stretching. I do need to get back into that, actually.
Dodging the saccadic masking
Singletrack MTB mag
road.cc on YouTube
2 comments