Alright so everynight for the past year i have religously stretched my legs out and have great hamstring flexibility. However in the past 3 weeks i pulled my left hamstring twice. The first one was after an extremely good warmup doing wind sprints. The 2nd time was me being retarded and racing down the beach.
This would be no problem for me any other time of year but it just so happens i pulled it the day before my senior football season began. The pull is just above the knee and goes about a quarter of the way up my hamstring. I’ve seen a doctor, a chiro, and a PT in the last 4 days and have been practicing with little or no contact for the past 4 days.
Its still a little tender and when i jerk around it hurts. My coordination has gone to shit because 3 of 4 time i tried blocking on a pull i ended up flat on my face. I’ve been icing as much as i can 2-3 times a day and have tried hot cold therapy once a night for the past couple nights. I also wear a tight compression wrap during practice but it keeps slipping off or cuts of circulation.
I have a scrimmage coming up and i have to be back by monday. This season means everything to me. I know theres alot of pts and stuff on here so my question is. Is there a way that i can tape/wrap this hamstring so that i can go 100% on it without risking another pull? Any info would be much appreciated.
I’m not a pt, just older so I could be dead wrong but I’m a 100% positive in my answer and that is NO. Not by a 100% by Monday.
You said compression wrap? did you mean shorts or wrap? if its a wrap just loosen it up until it doesn’t cut off circulation but keep it on there. If you meant shorts get a bigger pair. If you don’t have shorts then get them.
Did you let your coach know of your situation? Did you have any rest since you pulled it? You did not pull it twice, pulled hamstrings take a half a season to a whole season to fully heal.
Try stiff legged deadlifts, light weight working up to heavy by the end of the season as far down as you can go comfortably. It’s good to strengthen this muscle when its pulled otherwise it will pull again when its healed. DO NOT DO LEG CURLS until it is 100% healed. Even then they are not all that great. From now until then do a few warm up sprints increasing speed before you go out and run 100% Eaze up on the stretching. Specially before sprinting, if your going to do it do it after. Protein, and vitamins and good luck.
Thnx for the advice, i understand that this thing isnt gonna heal overnight. Its not that bad of a pull though. I do wear a compression girdle with an ace wrap underneath. What im really trying to figure out is if theres a taping method that can be used on the hamstring to return and play on a pulled hamstring at close to 100%?
[quote]FaTT MaTT wrote:
Thnx for the advice, i understand that this thing isnt gonna heal overnight. Its not that bad of a pull though. I do wear a compression girdle with an ace wrap underneath. What im really trying to figure out is if theres a taping method that can be used on the hamstring to return and play on a pulled hamstring at close to 100%?[/quote]
This kind of stuff always takes much longer than you think. Be careful…don’t make it worse.
Deep tissue massage on the hamstrings will do nothing to make it better by tomorrow. If you do decide to go the route of massage, get someone who does sports massage. When booking the massage, ask for a “post-event” sports massage. If they don’t know what that means, don’t see them.
[quote]kellerdp wrote:
Deep tissue massage on the hamstrings will do nothing to make it better by tomorrow. If you do decide to go the route of massage, get someone who does sports massage. When booking the massage, ask for a “post-event” sports massage. If they don’t know what that means, don’t see them. [/quote]
Didn’t say It would, but maybe I should have clarified. “Sports Massage” has become nothing but a generic term used by a lot therapist for increased marketability, just as Deep Tissue has. T
here are very few practicing therapist who are actually sports massage certified. I agree “post event” type session would be beneficial, but just because they use these terms does not mean they have any clue when it comes to working with injuries. I use the term Deep Tissue because it includes a wide variety of systems that go beyond the superficial layers of skin and fascia into deeper tissue, whether that be through direct manipulation or through neuromuscular mechanisms.
I know many practitioners including myself, that do not use sports massage in OUR marketing just because we have an understanding of muscle function and appropriate timing of massage - yet we have the understanding of pathology that any two therapist who are sports massage trained or just claiming to be, have. Anyway, my point is I am not sure who told you to say that, but it’s limiting scope is not true to the potential of the practitioners who may not practice sports massage, but posses just as much if not more skill.
As a Massage Therapist myself, I have the same view that you do. The reason I suggested him to ask for a post-event is it can, in most cases, weed out the dime-a-dozen therapists who took a 6 hour c.e.u. course on sports therapy that have no idea what they are doing.
As someone who has around 250 hours of sports education on top of the deep tissue A&P, someone requesting a post-event massage would help get me in a better mindset as opposed to “I done hurt my leg. Can you rub it?”
[quote]kellerdp wrote:
As a Massage Therapist myself, I have the same view that you do. The reason I suggested him to ask for a post-event is it can, in most cases, weed out the dime-a-dozen therapists who took a 6 hour c.e.u. course on sports therapy that have no idea what they are doing.
As someone who has around 250 hours of sports education on top of the deep tissue A&P, someone requesting a post-event massage would help get me in a better mindset as opposed to “I done hurt my leg. Can you rub it?”
Apologies if I offended you, Chris.
[/quote]
LoL, thanks. Not offended, and I understand what you are trying to do. Was just trying to clarify ; )
I know you aren’t going to do it because you are young and impatient, but I’d recommend resting it completely at first.
Like you, when I pulled a hamstring, I just wanted to patch it up and play. Unfortunately, this just prolongs the injury and I ended up:
Eventually having to take time off to heal anyway after the first month of the season and missing the rest of the games.
Getting frustrated because I couldn’t play as well with a gimpy leg.
It is still early in the season. Take at least 1 week off and see how it feels. Even slight hamstring pulls can take a month to heal so be a little more conservative than you are inclined to be.
Alright i’ve been getting the deep tissue once on thursday and once on Friday. I go back monday morning. The hamstring has no more bruising even tho there was little n the first place. When i try and stretch it ( it only hurts to stretch when im standing and leaning to the left. It has a deep burn kinda painful that goes right down the center. Friday i did all the conditioning drills, sprinting at about 75% and i was blocking pretty good on it too. Still cant move side to side that well without irritating it.
I found a taping technique on youtube. Took me about 5 days to find it. If i tape it up i think i can return tommorrow. But will it be able to withstand hard hitting? thats my main question. Can i hit someone with full force or will it just tear my hamstring? Is the lower part of the hammy that invovled in explosive hitting? any ideas?
honestly, why take the risk? is 1 or 2 games (probably the time it would take for you to heal up where you can go 100%) worth it to keep injuring yourself or keep you from recovering properly?
I would say no. There will be much stress going through the knee joint as well as the hip joint when involved in contact of football. Whether there is more stress at the hip (hip ext) really doesn’t need to be a concern cos the hamstrings cross both joints so you are still going to be causing stress to the hams no matter what.
Please, please, please, take it from someone who was in your position only worse. I tore my left quad on Dec. 3 of last year. A month later I could do moderate tempo work and was lifting good. I decided to play a pick up football game (former collegiate Tailback) and told myself I wouldn’t be doing myself any harm cos I was just QB’n. Long story short, we are athletes and in the time of competition we step it up a notch no matter what the situation. One play there was bad snap and I figured i could just out run the guy rushing. I re-tore the quad and now have a nice hole in my leg where the R.Femoris inserts. Ask me now and I wish I had stayed home and not played.
Heal up, use DMSO, active release to clear up any adhesions, whatever you have to but from a veteran whose gone through 4 hamstring strains…DON’T PUSH IT MAN!
Without having any sort of formal diagnosis, there is no way for any of us to know what your hamstrings current work capacity is. Right now, you are playing Russian roulette by playing on it without knowing.
All I can say is be careful. If you are worried about it, I’d say not to do it and get checked out by a doctor before proceeding. If you have messed it up twice recently, it is already set up to be injured again.
As someone already said, you are probably just going to do whatever you think will be better in the short term…
As someone who’s had his share of hamstring and lower back issues, I can tell you that if you don’t allow yourself time to heal and properly rehabilitate it, you could very well set yourself up for reinjury and chronic issues down the line. Not trying to jinx you, just saying…
I want to thank everyone for their advice and comments in this string.
Just a few hours ago, I was happily playing a game of kickball with a can of beer in my hands, as I do every Wednesday during the kickball season, when I was up at ‘bat’. As I ran down the first base, I heard a pop in my hamstring and right there knew it was going to suck…So I thought of looking at the forums on T-Nation to see how people deal with it to get back into the game (I’m more concerned with my lifting than the kickball season).
As I type this, I am laying upside down on my couch, with a bag of frozen vegetables wrapped to my hamstring (Its the only frozen thing I found when I got home).
I’m totally down with RICE protocol and also popped some ibuprofen and Flameout (plenty of inflammation here).
My question is, at what point do I think about going to get a massage? As soon as the pain is gone? The sooner the better? What’s the earliest/best time to go?
Anything else I should be doing/eating/not doing to get better, since we’re on the topic of hamstring pulls?
i’ve pulled my hamstrings playing rugby more times than i care to count, but if you’re intent on training, use lots of bengay. also, if you have to move around, i found that if it still hurts try to run on the toes of the injured leg. also, use exaggeratedly small strides for a while, to build up to being able to run.