Posted 4.15.2025

If you’ve ever felt tightness in your hamstrings, the typical advice you get from friends, family, and even healthcare professionals is to stretch them.

But your stretches just aren’t working, what do you do?

If you’re constantly stretching, foam rolling or theragunning a tight or tense muscle and nothing seems to be changing then it’s time move on and to start considering that it might be something else that is the root of the issue.
Just recently, a woman (we’ll call her “Stacy”) came to us with what she thought was a “chronic hamstring strain.”
She had been stretching her hamstrings consistently but they just weren’t loosening up and Stacy was getting so frustrated that it just wasn't working.
She wanted to know if there were better stretches she could be doing to loosen up the tight, uncomfortable feeling she was experiencing in the back of her thighs every day.
First, it was crucial to make certain that Stacy’s problem was in fact a tight hamstring.
If the chronic tightness in the back of Stacy’s thigh was due to a hamstring problem, her stretches really should’ve been having some sort of impact.

Instead, the stretches either did nothing or made her leg sore.

Sometimes after stretching a lot she would “feel” her hamstring for the rest of the day even when she was just sitting. We checked that she was using proper stretching technique and she was, so something wasn't making sense.
When you’re having a problem with your muscle and only your muscle you’ll experience discomfort, tightness, or pain when you’re either using that muscle or stretching that muscle.
Otherwise you should generally feel perfectly fine.
Muscles are made up of what we call contractile tissue. When you truly strain a muscle, this contractile tissue gets disrupted. You heal it by moving and stretching it and eventually it goes back to normal. On occasion, people don’t move enough after a muscle strain and the tissue can become chronically tight. But still, you would only experience that tightness when trying to use or stretch the muscle.

This wasn’t the case for Stacy.

Her pain would, on occasion, linger throughout the day when she was resting or sitting. Sometimes she’d notice hamstring discomfort at night when she was trying to sleep.
Stacy was feeling symptoms in her hamstring whether she was using that muscle or not and her stretches weren’t making a difference in her symptoms.
This immediately tells us that there was another problem causing her symptoms and it was more than just a tight hamstring. When the hamstring or thigh tightness doesn’t respond to stretching or exercise we must always consider the lower back.
Since Stacy wasn’t feeling any pain in her lower back she never considered this herself.
But the key was in how Stacy’s pain was behaving.
Your pain behaves in different ways depending on where it’s coming from.
As we mentioned previously, when your muscle is the source, your pain behaves in a very specific and repeatable manner.

But if pain is coming from your spine, it can quite literally be all over the place.

You can feel symptoms in your back, your butt, and your limbs. You’ll have good days and bad days. You’ll feel symptoms at rest, and you can certainly feel tightness in your hamstring, just like Stacy.
The other interesting thing about problems that originate from the spine is that you’ll often be able to trigger your symptoms by moving your spine.
When we investigated Stacy’s spine we found that when she moved a certain way over and over it would produce her hamstring tightness.
Bingo!
This explains why Stacy’s hamstring stretches were doing absolutely nothing. She was stretching her thigh when she really needed to stretch her back.

Does Stacy’s story resonate with you?

If you’re feeling chronic tightness or pain in your hamstring that just isn’t going away chances are that you’re missing something.
Do yourself a favor… DON’T check YouTube or “Dr. Google” for advice…

Talk to one of our experts instead and see how we can help you get those hamstrings better once and for all!

Prone Press Up

• Lie flat on your stomach.
• Keeping your back relaxed and your hips on the table, use your arms to press your chest upward until you feel a gentle stretch in your low back.
• Perform 10x, holding for 10 seconds

Sciatic Nerve Glide

• Start lying on back with knee and hip bent to 90 degrees and holding behind your knee with both arms while head and trunk stay on ground.
• Pull toes up towards your face
• Straighten out knee (until you feel a big pull in the back of the leg)
• Point toes down towards the floor
• Bend knee back down to the starting position.
• 2x10, NO HOLD
• Note: Nerves aren't like muscles--they hate to be stretched. Do these nerve glides up until the point where you feel the stretch, then back off the stretch.

Bird Dog

• While in a crawling position, tighten/brace at your abdominal muscles and then slowly lift a leg and opposite arm upwards.
• Your hip will move into hip extension on the way up.
• Lower leg and arm down and then repeat with opposite side.
• Maintain a level and stable pelvis and spine the entire time.
• 2x10, 5 sec holds

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