No one likes tight hamstrings. People who have tight hamstrings often have back pain, so being able to improve hamstring flexibility and improve tight hamstrings is important to a lot of people. In my experience, I have found that this is the most popular muscle that people want to be able to improve the flexibility of.

After all, how many people out there cannot touch their toes and wish they could? It seems like such a basic marker of fitness but there are a lot of people out there who cannot quite to this. In order to combat tight hamstrings, there are a few things you can try out.

The first thing you want to look into is stretching. One of the simplest stretches is to stand up and put your foot on a bench or chair with a little bit of knee bend. Next, keeping your back straight, bend forward at the hip. This will stretch the hamstring. Keep moving forward without letting the knee bend of the back move (everything comes from the hip) and you will get a better stretch.

You can get better results with this by performing a similar stretch but using a partner. What I mean by this is laying down on your back and having someone lift your leg up while the other one stays flat. They can carry your leg by the foot and push it towards your head. If you keep your leg mostly straight this will work well on the hamstrings.

You can take this stretch to the next level by contracting your hamstring at the peak of the stretch. Slowly build up force over time until you get to a max contraction and hold that for about 5 seconds. From there, release the contraction and let your partner push you back into a deeper stretch. You can repeat this drill a few times in a row before relaxing and it does wonders for tight hamstrings.

The key here is to stay dedicated to the program. If you do not do this regularly, it is not going to help you all that much. Be sure to regularly stretch your hamstrings (up to several times per day) if you are serious about getting those hamstrings to loosen up.