They found no change for lumbar flexion range of motion or in lumbar curvature even though hamstring muscle extensibility increased. Furthermore, to date, no studies have specifically examined selleck inhibitor the acute effects of hamstring stretching in sagittal spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the acute effects of hamstring stretching in thoracic and lumbar spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt in standing and trunk flexion postures. Material and Methods Participants Fifty-five employees of the police force service in an urban area (29.24 �� 7.41 years, body height 178.64 �� 5.14 cm, body mass 80.72 �� 9.50 kg) were recruited. Subjects practiced recreational physical exercise but were not participating in any structured flexibility training at the time of the study.

All the subjects were informed of the nature and the aim of this study before they signed an informed consent form. This study was approved by the Ethics and Research Committee of the University of Murcia. All subjects were asked to complete a health-screening questionnaire about their physical activity pattern, previous hamstring injuries and stretching and low back pain history. Subjects were excluded if (1) they had had any hamstring injury (hamstring muscle strain, hamstring spasm, or tendinopathies) within the last 6 months or (2) they had a history of low back pain in the last 2 months. Procedures Sagittal spinal curvatures and pelvic tilt were measured in the relaxed standing, sit-and-reach test and Macrae & Wright test.

Hamstring muscle extensibility was determined in both legs by active straight leg raise test and the sit-and-reach score. Three trials for each measure were administered, and the average value of measures was entered for data analysis. The measurements were made in a randomized order. The subjects were allowed to rest briefly standing up for 5 minutes between measures in the pre-test. At post-test the measures were immediately made without rest to avoid a decrease of extensibility. All measurements were made during the same testing session and were administered under the same environmental conditions. Participants were instructed not to undertake a weight-training session or strenuous exercise the day before testing to ensure consistent test conditions. No warm-up was performed by the subjects prior to the test measurements.

The subjects wore underclothing and no shoes. All measurements were taken around midday on each of the testing days (between 11:00 and 13:00 h) to control diurnal variations in spinal curvatures and hamstring extensibility. Spinal curvatures Entinostat and pelvic tilt were measured using a SpinalMouse system (Idiag, Fehraltdorf, Switzerland). The SpinalMouse is an electronic computer-aided measuring device which measures sagittal spinal range of motion and intersegmental angles in a non-invasive way and is a so-called surface-based technique.