If you are experiencing chronic hamstring problems, don't dispair. Hamstring injuries have many causes, but some are quite predictable and preventable.
These injuries are especially common in sports that require bursts of speed, like football, raquetball, and soccer. Poor warm-up, fatigue, and over-exertion are all likely to lead to these injuries, but muscle imbalance is a particularly common culprit. In fact, in a recent experiment, a sports physiologist correctly predicted four out of six hamstring injuries. He found that in individuals where hamstring strength was below 60% of quadriceps strength, injuries would eventually follow..
What's so troubling about hamstring strains, to both the athlete and his physician, is how easily and frequently these can recur, how long they take to rehabilitate, and how limited the treatment options are. Unlike some other sports-related injuries, hamstring problems are not usually repaired surgically. Researchers have yet to agree about why some individuals seem particularly prone to the injury. In addition, there is not common agreement as to what preventive measures are most effective.
Hamstrings are a group of four muscles at the back of the thigh that attach to the hip and the knee. When you walk or run, these muscles act in opposition to the quadriceps (the muscle group in the front of the thigh) to decelerate your leg just before your foot plants and also help to pull your hip forward. Strains most commonly occur when a player tries to make an explosive burst or quick motion, or when he tries to speed up in a sprint. Tightly muscled athletes seem to suffer more hamstring injuries. At the point of injury, the athlete usually feels either a distinct pull or a pop and pulls up in a moderate or severe limp. As with ankle sprains, physicians classify hamstring strains into three grades of severity.
Begin treatment with the classic RICE regimen (rest, ice, compression, and elevation), particularly with Grade II and III injuries that involve swelling and bruising. Ice should be applied for the first two to three days (for 15 minutes at a time hourly). A doctor may prescribe anti-inflammatory and muscle-relaxant medication. As soon as the patient can tolerate it, he is usually advised to begin gentle stretching, followed by aerobic and strengthening activities that don't adversely impact the injured muscles, such as stationary-bike riding and swimming, and later straight-leg exercises (cross-country skiing machines, for example) and the light jogging. Not only do these help disperse the blood from the bruising, they prevent the attachment of scarring to the affected tissues. Often patients benefit from wearing an elastic wrap or compression pants to support the healing muscles. Eventually the patient can return to moderate-speed sprints and other sport-specific activities but only as his level of pain and strength allow.
These injuries may take a long time to get over. "They're nagging, and get better at a turtle's pace. Pushing too fast, only slows healing. One reason hamstring strains tend to recur is that the injury naturally causes those muscles to tighten and become less pliable; if they're not rehabilitated properly with plenty of stretching, that tautness leaves the hamstrings vulnerable to re-injury, for the same reasons an athlete who doesn't warm up well before competition is putting himself at risk.
If your hamstrings tighten up, be sure slow down or stop what you're doing. It's one thing to work out, have muscle soreness the next day, and have it be gone by the third day. But if you have sore muscles for more than two days in a row, you're pushing too hard, and that leads to muscle pulls. If you work out the same part of your body too often, you open yourself up to more injuries. With hamstring injuries, patience is a virtue...Dr Bones