Save Your Back by Fixing Your Tight Hip flexors and hamstrings?

Can Tight or Painful Hip Flexor or Hamstring Muscles Affect Each Other?

Yes, but pain in one won’t necessarily lead to the other.  What they do both affect is the lumbar region of your back.

It’s pretty common to have isolated pain due to muscle weakness and tightness. But over time, these regions become  weaker or tighter, and your lower back ends up suffering.

How to Manage Tight Hip Flexors and Pain

How They Contribute to Lower Back Pain

The safety of your lumbar spine (specifically the L1-L5 vertebrae and discs) is directly affected by the action of the hip flexors and hamstrings.

When you have an imbalance, your lower back can easily be subject to strain and injury.  Below, you can take action necessary to reverse this imbalance and begin to reduce any risk of damage to your spine.

Learn This Very Effective (and Lumbar Protective) Stretch for Tight Hams

Do This Simple and Easy Stretch for Tight Hip Flexors

Try This Challenging Yet Helpful Stretch to Help Treat Hip Muscle Pain

Are You Hesitant or Lousy with Your Stretches? Take the Lazy Stretcher Test. Then Start Stretching!

Follow this ONE SIMPLE RULE to Protect Your Back, Engage Your Hip Flexors, Reduce Pain, and Stimulate Hamstring Flexibility

If you know just important it is the be physically active, you can begin these 10 Important Exercises for Lower Back and Hip Pain

Tight Hamstrings and Pelvic Tilt Pain

It pretty rare to have chronically tight (or short) hamstring muscles and NOT suffer lumbar pain. Hamstrings are very strong and large muscles which are often poorly maintained.  You have probably found that they are very difficult to keep conditioned, no matter your time and effort.

Tight hamstrings and hip flexors will often occur together. Their strong and constant pull can lead to an anterior pelvic tilt.  This forward tilt of the pelvis causes an increased pull on the hamstrings which also causes tightness.

Another problem for and unbalanced pelvic tilt that can hurt, is from the hip flexor known as the psoas (pronounced “so-as”) muscle.

Unlike the hamstrings, which are not connected to your lumbar vertebrae, the psoas is directly attached to each of the five lumbar vertebrae.  You can see this is figure 6.1 below.  Please see for further details.

To maintain a healthy and safe curvature for your spine, ALL of the muscles which are located in front and behind the pelvis must act effectively and function in a balanced fashion whenever you’re actively moving.

In doing this, they do the job to keep the pelvis in a neutral and safe position.  This ‘neutral tilt’ is necessary to maintain evenly distributed pressure on the vertebral discs so you won’t have any injury. 

Try This Exercise to Help Relieve Your Anterior Tilt Discomfort

The Hip Flexor Group

In figure 6.1, we see that they have various functions, especially where some muscles within the group cross over both the hip and knee joints.  The group consists of the iliopsoas, rectus femoris, sartorius, tensor fasciae latae, pectineus, gracilis, adductors and a gluteal muscles.

It is the iliopsoas muscle which has the strongest pull on our spine.  It is attached to the L1-L5 and T1 vertebrae.

A tight psoas (the part of the iliopsoas that connects to the lumbar spine) can pull on the spine and compress the discs and vertebral joints associated.

Poor Conditioning and Lumbar Pain

This is a very strong muscle. If it is always tight, disc compression is higher along with soreness.  Stretching your psoas is vital to back health.

A chronic state of shortening can also worsen your anterior pelvic tilt which is very harmful to your discs, especially within the L5-S1 region.

A tight iliacus muscle (part of the iliopsoas) is also part of having a tight psoas.  In addition to this, the other muscles listed above can also affect your anterior pelvic tilt such as your rectus femoris.

At the Workplace and Home

Most people do not have any serious conditions other than symptoms of fatigue in the lower back after extended times of sitting.  They can usually cope with this temporary discomfort and will recover quickly.

However, daily activities which involve extended and prolonged periods of inactivity or even over activity will cause muscle imbalances and chronic pain.

Hamstrings

Many symptoms of lower back pain can begin with tight hip flexors or hamstring muscles. It is rare to find a person who does not have tightness in these muscles, especially the hams.

When these muscles are too tight, they prevent the pelvis from tilting forward in a smooth manner, simultaneously with the back when bending forward to neutral.  As a result, you will mistakenly bend your spine, rather than at the pelvis to compensate for the lack of flexibility.

Tight hamstrings are often very uncomfortable to stretch, and we find ourselves trying to avoid it as much as possible.

We tend to favour bending at the spine rather than tilting our hips because of the discomfort we feel from tight hamstrings.

The Hamstring Group

The three major muscles of this group as seen in figure 6.2 are the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and the semimembranosus muscles.  These muscles are very challenging to stretch and require sincere effort, time and patience to achieve long-term results.

The tightness of a muscle is usually the result of lifestyle but can sometimes be a natural condition in an individual.  The better solution, however, is always to lengthen the muscle with stretching.