Hello. My doctor has diagnosed me with high hamstring tendonitis. It sucks - basically all movements that really hit my glutes and hams hard (like deads, even squats) hurt. But this has been going on for 9 months now - the injury occured while deadlifting in December of last year.
Now I took off almost 6 months and I started back in lifting and it felt okay - not perfect, but not PAIN. However, now it has gotten MUCH worse. I am going back to the doctor next week, but I am concerned - is this something that will never heal? Does anyone have experience with such tendonitis and what helps? Does really laying off for a LONG time fix it? I would if I knew it would fix the problem, but I DID take time off and it didn’t heal so now I’m just annoyed.
never really heard of tendonits with a muscle. Not an expert on this stuff but have you tried fish oil just for dietary purposes? It did help my knee tendonitis a great deal.
I have had (literally) dozen of cortisone injection on my anterior tibial tendon in my ankle and I can tell that if they are administered correctly, they provide decent relief for a certain length of time. However, make sure the injection is done at EXACTLY the right spot where it hurts the most. This isn’t easy to do. Also, keep in mind that cortisone is a band-aid for the pain. You need to get to the root of the problem. Cortisone is not the answer.
Thanks for the advice. Has anyone had luck with the tendons healing, or is this somehting I’ll have to deal with forever? The only experience I have is with my ankle - tore a tendon and it never healed. I got surgery. This one the docs SAYs is just inflamation, maybe minor tears, but it is not healing…do I just need to take a LOT of time off? That doesn’t seem to work either since I did that at one point - I was in bed for 2 months being ill. I would have thought it would have healed…
Tendons are notoriously slow to heal due to lack of blood flow to them. My tendonitis got to the point where I’ve had multiple surgeries to scrape and repair them, but they were in very bad shape. Tendonitis can be healed, but you must really baby the area and figure out why the tendon is so stressed to be injured. Perhaps some more details about the injury would help…
a cortisone injection in the area would bring down the inflammation. With rest it could help. I know it is standard procedure in certain cases of tendonitis. However I have no idea about something as large as a hammy.
i do not recommend cortisone injections. it weakens the tendon even more and you only wind up hurting it worse later. u need to just rehab it man. tons of ice and rest. take some fish oil, flax seed, glucosamine chondroitin, calcium, and magniesium.
i was cross checked playing lacrosse in the knee and wound up with a torn acl, strained colatorals, strained mcl, completely shredded minicus and the head of my femur was sheered.
but after letting it heal and rehabing it right im almost back to 100%.it will click once every 3 months or so. no big deal.
its a slow process but its definatly worth doing it right
Hi Sarah,
First off I would find another doctor, one that doesn’t call it a tendonitis, the appropriate term these days is tendonopathy. The reason for this is that ‘itis’ means inflammation, but studies have show these chronic overuse injuries, past a few weeks, dont actually have much inflammation.
Now, a cortisone injection may provide some relief and is worth a try but I would be looking at a second opinion, never heard of hamstring tendonopathies.
Also, try eccentric exercises for hamstrings, research shows eccentric exercises have great benefit for tendonopathies and this mirrors the results I have seen with patients
Thanks for the replies. I read about the eccentric training - how would you suggest doing this for that area? It’s hard to do just the eccentric of a DL…
[quote]Italianadonis18 wrote:
i do not recommend cortisone injections. it weakens the tendon even more and you only wind up hurting it worse later. u need to just rehab it man.[/quote]
" If a patient presents with a reoccurring tendinitis (or tendinopathy to be diagnostically correct), then the response of NSAIDs is obviously not correcting the cause of the dysfunction."
What can you suggest for rehab? I’m not sure how to do an eccentric dead. They also mention in that article doing exercises 1-2 times daily in the house. What kind of thing could I do?
Are static holds useful? Like holding a position where it would normally hurt?
I also wonder about stretching - if there are minor tears should I really tug on them?
What about foam rolling? Is this good? I ordered a foam roller for my house yesterday. I usually only use it once a day in the gym.
[quote]sarah1 wrote:
Thanks for the advice. Has anyone had luck with the tendons healing, or is this somehting I’ll have to deal with forever? The only experience I have is with my ankle - tore a tendon and it never healed. I got surgery. This one the docs SAYs is just inflamation, maybe minor tears, but it is not healing…do I just need to take a LOT of time off? That doesn’t seem to work either since I did that at one point - I was in bed for 2 months being ill. I would have thought it would have healed…
[/quote]
I had tendonitis in my wrist, and two things really helped. The first was lifting weights (which I didn’t do at all before), I think because the problem was caused by my wrists being much stronger than the rest of my body (musician see). The second was, as people say, complete rest. Hard to do with your hamstrings obviously. Maybe some low weight, high rep work would help you recover?
For a long standing hamstring strain I have had success with deep and excruciatingly painful deep tissue massage 9it’s no godd unless it hurts) and that might be worth considering.
ART is often mentioned as a successful therapy and again perhaps this is something worth looking at if available to you.
As a cheap alternative you could try rolling around on top of a tennis ball or similar to see if you can locate any trigger points.
I was wondering about the painful massage. It does hurt to roll on a tennis ball, but I don’t know if the pain is good. Also when I go to PT sometimes the night after it just throbbs - is this really good?
How long should the pain last after a “good” massage that doesn’t strain it?
I looked into ART but unfortunately my insurance doesn’t cover it so it would be very expensive.
I obviously have no real idea what the problem may be. Hamstring injuries can be notoriously difficult to clear up.
However it may be that with a persistent problem that you have rested the cause is due to either the build up of “scar tissue” or the development of “trigger points.” Whether these terms correctly describe what is going on I do not know but it does seem to be something which is often successfully treated by deep friction massage. Certainly so in my case.
I do not know if it is appropriate or will be helpful; it is just a suggested avenue for you to explore.
I feel that I can trust myself to distinguish between “good” and “bad” pain when self massaging and the tennis ball can be very painful work in dealing with muscle problems. If you do not feel able to make the distinction then I guess you will have to see a professional.
I have tried rolling on the tennis ball - one PT recommended it and the other did not. It seems to usually make it feel better when I do, but the second PT said maybe it would pull on tears and aggrivate it.
BUT it did seem to make it feel better sometimes, so I think I will go back to it.
How often should I do it and for how long?
Also, should one roll horizontally ACROSS the tendons/muscle fibers or longintuninally up and down them? I feel it would be better maybe to go up and down the fibers, but I’m having a really hard time doing that with the ball.
