Please help w/ hamstring injury

Alright well sorry but this is a long post and any help is appreciated. Back about three weeks ago I lightly strained my hamstring but I took three days off and then for our Monday workout (for football) it hurt doing some of the drills but I got through it and by the next day it didn’t bother me too much. But then this past Tuesday at practice I hurt it again but more severely. Both times that I hurt it was planting off of my right foot (the hurt hamstring is my right one). The first time was running a post route and the second time was at safety coming out of my back pedal breaking on a ball. Now I’m a left footed jumper and such so I believe my left leg is probably stronger than my right as just looking at my calves I can see my left is more developed than my right. So I’ve taken about 4 days off now icing it, wrapping it, epsom salt baths, light stretching etc. But I need help as to getting ready for practice Friday. The pain is pretty much gone but I’m not sure if the reason I hurt it is because my right leg is weaker than my left or my legs were just overtrained to the point where something had to give. I don’t think it was lack of warm up even though my legs were definitely tired and sore when I was hurt because I was felt loose in the middle of the drills and it wasn’t like I just ran out there did a play and got hurt, it was more like 10-15 plays when it happened. Basically I’m looking for help as to how to prevent it from happening again and how to get ready for my next practice such as swimming, should I lift a little bit just for my right leg or something else. And by the way the workouts I was doing before I got hurt and while I got hurt was something like Monday Tuesday and Thursday in the morning we would go out for agility and sprints for about 30 minutes, come lift for hour to an hour and a half (legs Monday, upper body Tuesday, both Thursday consisted of A LOT of volume) then Tuesday and Thursday back later in the day I had practice for 2 and a half hours and every other Monday there was practice too.

Sounds like your training is a poor choice for during-season. I’d lay off the squats for a while, using power snatches to help maintain/improve power; this is not a high volume exercise. If you hurt your hamstring from planting your foot while you were stretched and warmed-up, as it sounds like you certainly were, then they’re probably weak, which is typical. I’d focus on power snatches and hamstring work now if I were you, and make sure your diet is in line. Read Hamstrings From Hell, but you may want to use an easier program during the season depending on your level of conditioning; do not use high reps or volume for hams or power snatches during the season, and have a good reason if you ever use high volume for those.

Also, how much reading have you done since your post in late May? If you have been reading the mag, your training would be better than described, and you probably wouldn’t have this current problem, and you would have posted in Coach Davies’ forum if you did.

Go get ART asap to help fix it. It will help immensly as well as will accupuncture. Strengthen the hamstrings with box squats, glute ham raises, reverse hypers, good mornings, etc. Bulletproof your hamstrings now.

Ian King’s writings would give you a lot of insight into why you may have injured your hamstrings and how to correct both the possible pelvic malalignment and the unilateral strength imbalance in your legs.

I would also consult a good physio or progressive chiropractor in order to accurately assess what’s happening though. It’s diffuclt to tell over the message board.

Marc MacDougal’s (sp?) article this week called Militant Hypertrophy should help you to check out some possible pelvic malalignements. Good Luck with the rehab. Most important thing is to only hurt it once.

I don’t choose my training our strength coach does so I have no choice in what I do. And clintpatty we do power snatches once a week and that is not our in season training that is the training we do in the summer (late june to mid august).

Sorry, but what is ART?

ART=Active Release Techniques.

It works wonders; to learn more and locate a provider near you, go to www.activerelease.com.

Ditto what has been said. You’re in a tough spot because you have to follow the routine outlined by your coaches, but the reason you are having these problems may be due to the lifts you’ve been doing. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here, but by performing only quad-dominant movements and not equal amounts of hip dominant movements, your hams will be weak and prone to injury. You can actually develop an anteriorly tilted pelvis (like I did) from years of neglecting the lower back and hams. As soon as I followed the advice of the deadlift pushers like Ike and Goldberg, I noticed a HUGE difference in speed, power, and my lower back no longer hurts. I was at a Reds game two days ago and my baseball coach flattered me by telling me that he thinks I have major league speed and he asked what I did in the off season. I told him “T mag!” Deads, glute-ham raises, good mornings, leg curls.

Some of you guys are assuming that we don’t do any hamstring exercises but I never said that. Here’s a typical list of exercises on a leg day:

Power Jerk

Squat

Step ups or 1 legged squats

Partner Hams or stability ball Leg curls

Calf Raises

Depending on the day sometimes there won’t be step ups and it’ll be replaced with dead lifts

you only have 2 hamstring dominant exercises on that list and they sound like poor ones. what about romanian deadlifts, glute ham raises, reverse hypers, and leg curls?

the reason you pulled your hammy in the first place is likely because of a strength imbalance between quad and hamstring. you need to start training those hammys heavy with low reps (when you are able to train again) and lay off some of the quad dominant exercises.

as an athlete, hamstring strength, and health is of utmost importance. tell your strength coach to start reading t-mag if he doesnt understand that.

We do reverse hypers but that is considered part of our torso workout and when I said we do dead lifts I meant rdl’s because I didn’t know there was a difference so what is it? And as far as when I’m able to train again how long do you think that should be? I’ve already taken 4 days off and the injury feels pretty well.