Seated Hamstring Stretch With Back Opener

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Amy McCauley and I'm going to demonstrate a seated hamstring stretch with a back opener. The two muscles that we are working are the hamstrings and across the lower back. You are going to also feel the upper back and the shoulder blades stretch out. Let your knees soften. You are going to reach around to the toes. You are going to grab on to the balls of your feet and then slowly start to stretch the back of your knees. If it is uncomfortable keep those knees bent slightly. The ultimate goal is to go on to a straight knee lengthening the back of the hamstrings, take your hands, cross the balls of your feet and ten start to apply pressure on to your toes so that you feel the shoulder blades open. Your ultimate goal is to separate those shoulder blades, let go of any tension in your back, the lower back should start to curve, hold it for a few seconds, nice slow breathing, try not to jerk the motion, balance. It is nice static stretch and release, take a deep breath in and then go back down. We are going to try to repeat this about two to three times. Pressure on the toes, separate the shoulder blades. Drop the chin to chest, open up the back and open up the hamstrings. Those of you who are runners, bikers, athletes, you are going to find a lot of benefit to this stretch because you are going to feel a lot of the tension of the hamstrings in the back open up when they automatically get tight when you are doing your activities. So a couple of things to think about. Sit nice and tall, back and flat. Wrap your hands around the toes if you need to to take the pressure off the hamstrings, bend the knees, start to straighten the knees and then push the toes. That is going to actually separate the shoulder blades. Relax the chin to chest and breath. Try not to hold your breath and then ease into your stretch without balancing and again we are holding about 30 seconds and then we are repeating and that is how we do a hamstring stretch with a shoulder and back opener."