PNF Stretching for Tight Hamstrings

Yuri Elkaim, BPHE, CK, RHN
myTreadmillTrainer.com

This is Yuri Elkaim, your personal fitness coach. Today we’re not going to be doing a workout.

Instead, I’m going to teach you how to stretch a couple of muscles that get very tight – especially in men. These include the hamstrings and the groins. I’m going to teach you a different way of stretching, called PNF.

PNF stands for Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation.

Normally, it is done when you have someone else helping you stretch because you need a bit of resistance which they can provide. Also, there is an active component to PNF.

That said, I am going to teach you two stretches that you can do on your own to get that same effect.

The first stretch we are going to do is to stretch out the hamstrings. You are going to need a taller bench, or a box, or a table even to prop up your leg so that your leg can roughly be parallel to the floor.

Put your leg on the table, toe pointing up. We are going to target the back of the thigh, the hamstrings. The key with PNF stretching is that when you are at a point of resistance, instead of just holding a stretch, what you want to do is push your heel down onto the table to activate your hamstrings. Hold that stretch for about 5 seconds and then relax.

What that allows you to do is trick your body into going a little bit further into the stretch. So now that you have relaxed your muscles for a few seconds, bring your torso forward to further the stretch in the hamstring and repeat.

Push your heel down onto the box again at about 20% of your maximum contraction. Keep your torso at the same angle you started with, and then relax. The next time, go a little bit further with the torso, bringing it even closer to your leg. Push down onto the box for the 3rd time.

Get that nice strong pull. It doesn’t have to be too hard, again, 20-25% of your maximum contraction capability and then relax. You can do that about 4 or 5 times.

The cool thing about this type of stretching is that you will notice within literally seconds that you are able to go further and further on every single stretch. This is the type of stretching modality that is used in gymnastics, and that is really where it came from, especially in the Eastern Block like Russia and the Ukraine. They use it because it is very effective.

The next stretch I am going to teach you is to stretch the groin muscles. Start on the floor in a seated position. You can have something against your back to keep you tall if you wish. Place the soles of your feet together, bringing your heels in toward the hips, torso nice and tall. Place your elbows on the sides of your thighs or on your knees and your hands on your shoe laces.

Push your arms down into your legs and push your legs back up into your arms for a 5 second contraction. Breathe through it and then relax. The next time, push your elbows a little harder into your legs, and push back again with the groin muscles. Every time you do this it gets a little easier to go a little bit deeper because we are tricking the nervous system, in essence. Do this 4 or 5 times.

So what you’ll notice, again, is that every time you do this stretch, you can go a little bit further, and a little bit further. We’re tricking the neuromuscular system, overriding the receptors that tell the body to stop stretching so that we can get more of a stretch

If you have tight hamstrings, if you have tight groin muscles, those are 2 stretches that I recommend doing on your own on a daily basis. They will make a huge difference for you.

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