Note from Casey: Hey guys, I hope you’re as excited as I am for this post. Paul French, from Pain Free Football, has kindly taken some time to talk with us about an awesome new recovery method that is sweeping the soccer world. He uses teaching us how to release a tight hamstring to explains it below, but just know, the way you always thought to recover and “stretch” a muscle is about to be turned on its head. Make sure to leave a comment below to ask Paul any questions, and also head over to their site to check out how to further expand your recovery tool belt.

There’s a big change coming in the sporting world. It’s a change that will extend the careers of ageing athletes and improve the recovery times of injured stars. The cool thing is that you guys get to read about it before anyone else. In fact, read this article through and you’ll be able to try it for yourself.

How to Release a Tight Hamstring the Correct Way

You’ve always been told that stretching improves performance while preventing injury and muscle soreness. You might even have believed it. This is your story, my story, everyone’s story. And it’s the received wisdom. Until it isn’t.

First, some background. Before I discovered a different way of doing things, I’d had some injuries. I’d ruptured a tendon in my shoulder, blown both ankles out, a broken leg. My body just didn’t feel how it used to. It didn’t respond to my brain the way I wanted it to.

The reason that I found the answer that I had begun to think didn’t exist is simple. Soccer. You see, I really LOVE playing soccer.

And because, in my late 20s, I didn’t want to give up playing just because my body was acting like a brat, I eventually found the answer.

Now I play with no pain whatsoever. I fully expect to continue playing into my 40s and beyond.

If you’ve got tight muscles or localised pain, you need to understand these three things:

1. Pain occurs when muscles become contracted (through stress or trauma)
2. Your brain controls your muscles
3. To fully resolve muscular pain, you have to engage your brain

Therefore, pulling on muscles (i.e. stretching) will only make bad things happen.

Engaging the brain at a neurological level is the only way to make your muscles work efficiently.

You know what a typical hamstring stretch looks like, accompanied with the instructions: Hold for 10-30 seconds, relax, repeat. This is NASTY advice.

Pulling on a tight area and expecting it to naturally lengthen is wishful thinking. The brain, for whatever reason, is causing that muscle or muscles to hold tension. The muscle is no longer under the brain’s conscious control. Applying force is not going to change that.

Instead, you have to involve the brain through movement. Here’s an alternative. Here’s THE alternative to stretching that really works.

Try it now or bookmark this page for later.

Introducing The Reverse Hamstring Release

Start: Lying on your front with your head turned to the left. Bend your right leg at a right angle.
Movement: Inhale to lift your knee enough to sense hamstrings/buttock and lower back contract. Exhale to slowly lower your knee to the floor, then slowly straighten your leg. When rested, sense the release in the back and hamstrings.
Repeat: x3, then slowly turn head to right and repeat for your left leg.

Try it yourself. Try it now. It works. If it works, please give us a shout on Twitter to let us know!

So the next time a teammate gives you an earful about stretching, you can send them a link The Reverse Hamstring Release.

Good luck out there.

Paul French writes about the science of soccer fitness at painfreefootball.com/blog