Hamstring stretches:
1) Lie on your back, both knees bent, feet flat to the floor. Relax your back until it is comfortable.
2) Raise one knee in to the chest, hands under the knee joint (sort of trapped betwen calf and thigh). Ease it in to the chest until you feel a small stretch in your butt! Hold that for 10 seconds.
3) Slowly raise the foot into the air. Aim to get the leg as straight as possible, but keeping the knee slighlty bent, or soft as we instructors like to say! Support the legs with one or both hands, or a towel of that is easier. Support it either below or above the knee joint, whichever is most comfortable for you. Hold that for 10 seconds.
4) Take a deep breath in, as you exhale ease the leg in to your chest a little further if you can. Hold that there for another 10seconds. If you want to you can point and flex your toes at this pint to give your calf and shin a little stretch too!
5) Lower the leg back to the floor and repeat with other leg!
That is the most complete and controllable hams stretch. It is more effective than any standing stretch and is more difficult to do wrong than any standing stretch.
Hams work! Well every time you lift your foot off the floor (raising your heel behind you) you work your hams. So this muscle is used to a lot of work. This means that nasty instructors like me
like to tire out the surrounding muscles before targetting the hams. Just so's they really feel it!
So glutes first!:
1) Kneel down and drop your hands to the floor. Now bend your elbows so as your forearms are on the floor. You should now be propped up on your knees and forearms! Keep your knees hip width apart. Suck in your tummy to give your back extra support.
2) Raise 1 leg into the air, knee bent at 90degrees. The thigh should be parallell with the floor and the foot parallell to the ceiling. This is your start position.
3) Bring the knee into your chest and then raise the leg back to the start position - keeping the knee and ankle bent to 90degrees all the time.
Do it nice and slowly about 10 times to begin with.
Now those hams:
1) Take the same leg back to the start position. Don't change legs here, it's not time yet!
2) Leave the thigh parallell to the floor throughout this move. Now extend and bend from the knee.
3) Do that about 10 times. You should feel the burn in your butt quite quickly!
Now do the other leg!
If this doesn't make sense get right back to me! It is actually more difficult than I expected trying to write these without being able to demonstrate! So I may make an error. Let me know and I will put it right immediately!
Good luck, Stef