This is Sarah, lots of you will know her as the driving force behind @Sweathgt and a full time active member down @hg3fitness.
Sarah came to see me a couple of months ago having started to get a tight feeling in her hamstring.
Through assessment we found that her hamstrings were actually very flexible and had an excellent range of movement (ROM). With that result we looked through her pelvis and hips and actually found that Sarah had very tight hip flexors.
So why was Sarah getting pain in her hamstring? Tight hip flexors tilt the pelvis shortening the quads and other flexors, however this in turn lengthens the muscles on the posterior (back) including the hamstrings! This lengthening puts the muscle on a constant stretch that it isn’t comfortable with and when you then stretch it further through exercise it becomes fatigued more quickly.
A fatigued muscle will always send out a signal to the brain in the form of pain…this is exactly what was happening with Sarah.
After a couple of sessions working on opening up the hip working on all the flexors including Quadriceps, Illiacus, Psoas major and minor. Sarah’s pelvis rotated back to neutral and the pain in the hamstring went away. Now continuing with stretching exercises Sarah is pain free and hitting training hard!!
Just goes to show that where the pain is referring to is not always where the problem lies….our whole body is one long chain of connected tissue so an issue in your shoulder can certainly have an effect on hip, back and leg bio-mechanics.
If you want some advice on muscle pain, get in touch.
