When you're feeling pain in your body at any point in your body, it's very important to focus on the joint above and below the specific site of pain to make sure that the pain is not radiating from somewhere else. The muscles above and below the joints is also very important to stretch out because these may be pulling on the joints from different directions. This is a stretch of our hamstring muscles for the back of our thighs. You want to start by sitting comfortably on the floor. Take a deep breath in and raise your hands straight up as your back is as straight as possible. Lean with your chest leading forward And reach your hands out as far as you can on your legs or on your feet.
Hold the stretch for 12 to 15 seconds, taking three deep breaths as you're fully stretched. Now one of the important things to do for this stretch is as you're leaning forwards stretching out, you want to be releasing air from your lungs, exhaling as you're leaning forwards, exhale, exhale, exhale and reach as far as you can. One once you finally reached, count for 12 to 15 seconds, again taking three deep breaths. Do this stretch three times in a row and each of the three times try to go a little bit further than the previous time. Now if you can't reach all the way to your feet, there are two things that you can do to make this stretch a little bit easier for you. And again, as you do it more and more, try to progress and reach a little bit further each time stretching out your hamstrings a little bit more.
Why one of the easier ways to do this is to use a towel. This is the best way to do it. If you can't reach your feet. Fold it up like you see and wrap it around the ends of your feet. This way you can really use the towel to pull yourself forward with your arms and help your hamstrings get stretched out this way. Just as before, with the original stretch, you want to do this three times, exhaling as you will lean forward each time and remember to keep your legs straight.
That's one of the most critical parts of this stretch, keeping your legs straight You want to be grabbing the outsides of the middle of the feet. And again, as you see with the towel, it's wrapped around the middle of the feet and not the toes. This is because if you pull back on the toes, you're actually stretching your calf muscles instead of your hamstrings. And although this is a good alternative stretch, in this one, we want to focus on our hamstrings. Between each of the three stretches, you want to shake your legs out a little bit and release some of the muscles. And that's it for this stretch for the hamstrings.