Often times our hamstrings are overlooked or exercised improperly. In fact, hamstring injuries are one of the top injuries in sports. Research has found that one of the main reasons for this was that athletes were not exercising their hamstrings in their fullest range of motion. Since they weren't conditioning their hamstrings in a fully lengthened position they tended to have more pulls, strains, and tears in their hamstrings.

Since our hamstrings connect to the base of our pelvic bone they help control the curvature of our lower backs. You can have tension in your hamstrings because you have tension in your lower back as they start to have a tug of war to stabilize your lower back. Additionally, if you have one hip higher than the other, you will most certainly have lower back pain and even sciatica. This, in turn, would cause you to have hamstring tension on the side that has the lifted hip because the hamstring is working to pull the hip back down into place. If all you do is simply stretch your hamstring because you feel it is tight, you will actually be turning off the one mechanism the body is trying to use to stabilize your hips and help the unbalanced pressure on your lower back that is causing lower back pain and sciatica.

In this video Craig Zuckerman explains why your hamstrings may be tight, why stretching them may be the wrong thing to do, and how to properly exercise your hamstrings in both their shortened and lengthened position so you can prevent hamstring injuries, lower back pain, and sciatica.