Tight Hams?

PART I

Well let's hope it settles down. Some of it could just be it tightening up. When you stretch it after an injury like that it may feel uncomfortable but that's ok, go ahead and stretch as long as there is not bad pain....

You do seem to have a lot of problems with recurrent tightness. How dedicated have you been to your stretching regimen?

I'll look at the squat vid again. He said you have "excessive posterior tilt" which would mean the top of your pelvis tilts to the rear excessively but I bet he meant the front which would be "anterior" (ante meaning "before" or "in front of"). For someone to say you have this while your are squatting can be purely subjective. It's really when you are just standing normally when this counts.

I didn't notice a lot of 'butt wink' on the box squats but I will look again. You did have a lot of butt wink on your regular ATG squats. I agree in general that your probably need to stretch harder after your workouts. And you may be one of those people who would benefit from stretching (more dynamically) in between sets.

As far as having tight hamstrings and inhibited hip flexors and erectors he doesn't know what he's talking about. It would be very unusual for tight hamstrings to result in loose and weak hip flexors and spinal erectors. Most of the time if your hammies are excessively tight so are your hip flexors. Remember when you couldn't sleep on your back? (I don't know if you can now). Remember how tight your hip flexors were?

It doesn't make biomechanical sense. Likewise if you have prominent pelvic "posterior" tilt your hamstrings would likely be loose not tight. NO. Your hamstrings, hips flexors, AND erectors are tight. The only thing that is likely inhibited are the glutes which we have confirmed and is one of the things this routine was desinged to correct.

You are already doing (or are supposed to be doing) everything you can to correct any flexibility issues. Your routine is dealing with strength. If there is butt wink then the only other way to really deal with that is to not go so low that butt wink results and work on going lower slowly until you can do it without the wink.

And I explained all this before .

BTW, I know you are probably really frustrated and stressed about the back. But I know it will all work out. Go ahead and be stretching it gently at this point. I'd most like you to heat it and then stretch it. If your mom could massage it also that would be great.

PART II

I may not have explained it all thouroughly enough.

I didn't want to overwhelm you with technical info.

I'll give you a for instance and then we'll get into the stretching later.

One of the misunderstandings that the guy in the PM had was the difference between lenght and flexibiltiy or "tightness".

Assuming he meant excessive anterior tilt of the pelvis instead of posterior tilt he assumed that the psoas and spinal erectors would be "tight" and short...thus pulling the pelvis from the front and the back into an excessive anterior tilt and increasing the arch of the lumbar spine. Right?

So he further assumed that this would produce lengthened hams. But this is where his logic broke down. You can have long hams but still be "overactive and tight" in them. In a position of execessive anterior tilt the hams would be taking on more of their fair share of the load. While the gluteals would be weak and inhibited. Obviously you don't consider your hams to be very flexible right now. Well flexibility is a function of the nervous system not the "length" of the muscle belly.

We had to assume that your hams would need flexibility trianing and we were right. And of course your erectors and hip flexors would be both short and tight instead of just tight.

Between the glutes and the hams, we assume that the glutes are too weak. BUT, between the quads and the hams, we assume that the hams are too weak. We assume therefore that the hams will be less flexible than the glutes (you don't have "tight" glutes do you?) and we also assume that the quads although seemingly "overactive" are really owing more of a problem to the tight hip flexors and the quads will get a stretch when we stretch the hips flexors properly.

So you see how complicated and confusing this stuff really is.

One thing I think seems apparent is that we need to put in more dynamic stretching work before your workouts.