Recovering injured hamstring
Late last year I had a small tear of my hamstring. This severely hindered my training, preventing major hip-hinge movements, like deadlifts, and even as a stabiliser in certain pull-down/cable row machines.
I adapted my leg training to work around this, doing a phase of pin-squats, stopping the bar at a height that prevented my hamstring from going into a full stretch deep at the bottom.
To rehab the injury itself, hamstring physio was a puzzle to work out. Stretching too frequently made the symptoms worse, essentially persistently re-opening a cut. Conversely, doing nothing and resting also made it worse, becoming too tight and feeling ‘sticky’.
I found a nice middle-ground doing some banded isometrics twice weekly. This way I could easily moderate the resistance going through the injured muscle. The band allowed me to reduce tension in the stretch where I was most sensitive to re-injury, whilst still getting a lot of tension at the contraction.
Photo of the set-up is above.
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