Does physio help with Hamstring injuries?

Who gets Hamstring injuries?

Hamstring injuries are very common in sports involving running, sprinting and kicking. Recent research suggests 12% of injuries in professional football are hamstring injuries, and more importantly the recurrence rate of a hamstring injury was 12-48%. What this tells us, is physiotherapy has a key role in treating the injury but also preventing future hamstring injuries too.

What are the reasons for getting a hamstring injury?

Here are some of the common causes of hamstring injury:

·         Shortened optimum muscle length

·         lack of muscle flexibility

·         strength imbalance

·         insufficient warm-up

·         fatigue

·         lower back injury

·         poor lumbar posture

·         increased muscle neural tension

How to heal a hamstring strain

At MLH Physio the hamstring injuries we see vary greatly, from those with a little tightness to those hardly able to walk and a black thigh. A variety of treatments can be utilised by our chartered physiotherapists, including soft-tissue techniques, manual therapy, ultrasound and rehabilitation exercises. The trend with current hamstring injury exercises is eccentric loading, basically stretching the hamstring under load from the body or weights. This should form the basis of any hamstring rehabilitation program.

In our experience the hardest challenge with a hamstring strain, is predicting when a patient is ready to return to play. It’s easy to test the flexibility or strength on the bed in clinic, but that doesn’t reproduce the forces placed upon the hamstring when running or sprinting. In about 2010, Askling introduced a reliable H-Test, which most now see as a gold-standard test to pass before returning to sport. This is a fast straight leg raise to its maximum range, and to pass it needs to be without any pain and is a very reliable test.

If you have an issue with your hamstring, you can contact us here or BOOK ONLINE at any of our clinics in Manchester & Cheshire.