Are your weak neck muscles making your hamstrings tight?

The admirable Perry Nickelston recently wrote an article talking about the relationship between your neck and your hamstrings. He discusses the importance of the nervous system with regard to how your body will creat stability, mobility and compensation. He wrote:

"To generate power, you need mobility. To have mobility, you need stability. Instability signals the brain and nervous system to put the brakes on power output because it feels threatened. A lack of stability is a threat to your nervous system."

"The brain is in control of the gas pedal and it controls how much juice it puts into a muscle. It will inhibit (neural down regulate or cause 'weakness') to one muscle in a pattern and facilitate (neural up regulate or 'tighten') another in an attempt to gain stability. It robs Peter to pay Paul.

The brain is a lazy piece of meat and it does not like to work hard. It cheats and takes the easy way out every chance it gets. When dysfunctional movement patterns exist, the brain will simply choose an easier alternate path to accomplishing a given task."

So if the deep core stabilizing system of your body (for example your deep neck flexors) is unstable, your nervous system will simply recruit more superficial power amplifiers to take over (power amplifers like the hamstrings).

This is not to say that for everyone who has tight hamstring or weakness in their neck flexing ability has this exact dysfunctional compensation, only that this is a common relationship.