Got Sit Bone Pain? – What To Do With That Hamstring © 2010

Dealing with sit bone pain

I was in the DC area this month and saw a student that I knew from a previous workshop. At that time Patricia had recently “pulled a hamstring”. Her major symptom was sit bone pain (sit bone = ischial tuberosity) when folding forward. The secondary symptom was that it also hurt when she sat for long periods, especially in the car. I saw her just a couple of weeks ago and she still had the same pain.

Although not my regular advice, the most common way people are told to deal with sit bone pain in yoga is to bend their knees in their forward bends. The idea is that by bending your knees you shorten the hamstrings. By shortening the hamstrings you reduce the amount of pull or tension placed on them. It sounds good in theory.

Here’s the problem with that theory. I refer to the hamstrings as two joint muscles. What this means is that changing the position at one of the two joints (hip or knee), changes the end of the muscles that will receive more force from actually stretching the muscle.

When you bend your knees and bend forward, more of the pressure created by the “stretch” to the hamstrings goes into the opposite end. In other words, if you bend your knees in a forward bend, you add more force to the sit bone end of the hamstrings.

Assuming that you’ve actually torn your hamstrings (of course a minor tear usually), and that you’ve torn the end of your hamstrings closest to your sit bones, do you think it would be wise to put more pressure on th0se same tissues? The answer is no, it wouldn’t. Could this cause more sit bone pain? Yes.

What should you do about sit bone pain?

The next question is: Well, what should we do then?

Although I can’t say that this will work in every situation for every individual, this has proven to work for a number of people in this situation. There are always exceptions.

Now, during this most recent interaction with Patricia, I took a moment to give a gentle squeeze to the area of her hamstrings just above the knee joint. (The opposite end from where she was feeling discomfort.) I could see in her face that these tissues were particularly tender and sore. That, along with the symptom that she would actually get pain in her sit bone when she would sit in the car, clued me in that this technique would probably work for her. The significance of the sit bone pain while sitting in the car is that the part of the hamstrings that gets the most pressure in a car seat is the bottom (distal) end of the hamstrings closest to the knee.

The technique

The technique I apply is extremely simple, and as I told this student, worth trying for two or three weeks to see what happens. Ah yeah, the technique… you’re waiting for it aren’t you? The answer is… keep your knees straight. That’s it. When you forward bend, either standing or in seated postures, keep the leg extremely straight. And, don’t go as deeply into the forward bend as you normally do.

By keeping the knee straight, with quadriceps engaged, you keep the stretch in the hamstrings equal between both ends. In the situation I mentioned above, the hamstrings had gotten to a place where their distal end near the knee got too tight. The tension in this end seemed to lead to consistent tension in the hamstrings as a whole and particularly near the sit bones. That needed to be taken out by keeping the knee straight.

Patricia came to three days of practice with me in a row. She kept her knees extremely straight and guess what? Sit bone pain was reduced after just these few days.

***Please note that this does not account for all sit bone pain, nor does it mean that there are not times when it is appropriate to bend the knees. This advice was specific for this yoga student at this time.