hamstring

This is the third post in our multi-part series on floor-sitting. Read Part 1 on floor sitting and Part 2 on squatting!

It’s very common for women in Africa to sit with their legs outstretched. I’ve seen rows of women use this position to spin yarn, engage in idle chatter, sort items, and more. I’ve seen babies massaged by women using this position both in Burkina Faso and in the U.S. by a visiting Indian masseuse who does traditional baby massage in Surat, India. In Samiland I saw this position used to bake bread in a lavoo (a Sami structure very similar to a teepee).

The Sami, who I visited in July 2015 (see my post Sleeping on Birch Branches in Samiland), bake with outstretched legs in their traditional lavoos (teepees). This is my friend Fredrik’s family.

Sitting with legs outstretched is useful when you need an extended flattish lap and your hamstring flexibility allows it. The ground needs to be dry and clean to make this an inviting position. It’s a particularly useful position for childcare. In addition to the aforementioned baby massage, our team member Angela Häkkilä has observed Anatolian women using their outstretched legs as a cradle for babies and toddlers, who are rocked to sleep with a sideways motion of the legs and a gentle lullaby.

 
In this case, the Burkinabé woman at the left is leaning against a wall for extra comfort while carding wool. With her degree of hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility, she’d be fine without a wall, too!

The problem
Many people don’t have the hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility to sit on the floor with outstretched legs and not round the spine. Tight hamstrings and gluteal muscles cause the pelvis to tuck under, preventing upright and relaxed stacking. Over time this can lead to a rounded back, degenerated discs, and pain. 

The fix
Place something under the bottom to encourage the pelvis to antevert, and/or consider sitting against a wall, tree trunk, or other surface to counteract the tendency to round the spine. 

With the modification of adding a support under or behind you, you will not only have expanded your repertoire of healthy sitting positions and possible activities, you will also be elongating your hamstrings to better garden, clean, and hip-hinge in general.

Though this Orissa woman would probably be just fine sitting on the ground, her technique of elevating the seat is very helpful for people in modern societies.

 
This Burkinabé massage therapist is testing the temperature of the water she will use to massage a newborn baby. Note her outstretched legs, sitting stool, and seated hip-hinge, all of which support the baby, the action, and the massage therapist to be healthy.

If this way of sitting would be helpful in your life, or if you’d benefit from increased hamstring and gluteus maximus flexibility, we recommend beginning by sitting on a support that will help antevert your pelvis, or with your behind against a wall for support. Since it’s only an issue of muscle flexibility, it’s certainly possible to work up to sitting with your legs outstretched without other support.

Stretching is a common prescription to help with back pain. At https://www.healthoutcome.org, the world’s first crowdsourcing platform to rate medical interventions, stretching is the 6th most commonly used intervention, after physical therapy, NSAIDs, heat, rest, and cortisone injections. On a scale from 0-5, stretching (rated 2.6) is the 5th most highly rated intervention after Postural Modification (3.8), Yoga (3.1), Supplements (2.9), Weight Loss (2.8), and Meditation (2.7).

Back pain caused by tight muscles is common

The Gokhale Method considers stretching to be one of many essential pieces in solving most people’s back problems. Even though stretching alone cannot give an equivalent result to that of a well-crafted Postural Modification approach, it is a good thing, and if slightly tweaked, could give better satisfaction and results in less time. If done poorly, on the other hand, stretching can harm, rather than help you.

A few key concepts that can help your approach to stretching are:

1. Your hunter gatherer ancestors, with whom you share the vast majority of your genes, didn’t do stretches per se. In the course of their daily activities, their bodies were self-stretching, self-maintaining, and mostly, self-healing. It’s true our lifestyles are different from theirs, but this realization should provoke some enquiry about small modifications in our ways of moving that would enable us, too, to be as efficiently and effectively stretched out as our ancestors were.

This hunter gets a natural shoulder stretch from using a bow and arrow

2. Not every muscle in your body needs to be super flexible. Unless you’re a gymnast or yogi, some stiffness here and there is well-tolerated, and can be beneficial when there isn’t great strength to balance extreme flexibility.

3. Flexibility is very useful in the following muscles: hamstrings (allows pelvic anteversion and hip-hinging), psoas (allows a full length stride without a swayback), external hip rotators (allows deep hip-hinging), pecs and traps (allows normal shoulder alignment and prevents pathology in the shoulder, facilitates good range-of-motion for the arms), and calves (allows the heels to remain on the ground for an extended time in a stride).

Calf stretches can help achieve a healthy stride

4. The reason these flexibilities are useful is that they facilitate normal human movement, which also gives a clue on to how to keep these flexibilities: PERFORM NORMAL HUMAN MOVEMENT! Hip-hinge well, stride well, maintain shoulder alignment well while moving the arms extensively, etc., and you’ll be largely covered for flexibility.

Hip-hinging in the garden keeps hamstrings flexible

Actor Shemar Moore keeps his shoulders rolled back when playing on the beach with some spare children

5. If your day does not include enough movement, supplement with a few, well-chosen stretches. It’s extremely efficient to do several stretches simultaneously. It’s even more efficient if you combine this with strengthening several muscles simultaneously.

Stretching the psoas (enables a healthy stride) and pecs, while strengthening the quads

6. Yoga and dance are two approaches to exercise that are especially efficient and effective for satisfying stretch (and strengthening) needs. Most approaches to yoga and dance could use some tweaking to “do no harm” and do more good, but it’s hard to match the possibilities with these traditional, multi-faceted, tried and true practices.

Dance is excellent for increasing flexibility - and strength

7. Distinguish between flexibility of your muscles and laxity in your ligaments. This is a big one, folks! Flexibility in appropriate muscles is terrific; laxity in your ligaments is not! Ligaments are a type of connective tissue that connect bones and cartilage in your joints and provide stability to the skeleton. Overstretched ligaments become too loose to hold your joints together under pressure or tension. People with lax shoulder ligaments, for example, can sometimes dislocate and “pop” their shoulders back in too easily. People with lax ligaments in their spinal column are able to round their spines excessively.
   
   
   This common approach to stretching the hamstrings, done poorly, causes laxity in spinal ligaments

This person would be better off lying on his back and raising one leg at a time to stretch out his very tight hamstrings

Do you have any favorite stretches? Please share them with us! We can then talk about pro's and con's for the stretches you share.