“That can stand for as many as 6 players within a squad suffering a hamstring related injury at any one time”
With any injury, the degree of severity can vary considerably, this applies to hamstring strains too! Low grade strains can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks to rehabilitate with more severe high-grade hamstring tears taking anywhere from 6-12 weeks.
It gets worse….
Once you injury your hamstring, the re-injury rate increases dramatically with reports showing incidents of re-injury between 22-34%.
Not only can you be sitting on the sideline for up to 12 weeks, but when you come back to training and playing, there is still a significant risk that you will re-injure your hamstring.
All sounds like doom and gloom to me!
But there is positive in all of this…
Hamstring injuries are preventable!
That’s right by preparing our hamstrings well through the use of prehabilitation (Prehab) exercises, we can avoid injury to our hamstring muscle.
Prehab exercises, what are they?
Well there are a number of exercises that we can include within our weekly training regime that will give us a fighting fit chance of avoiding hamstring injuries and re-injuries.
One exercise that I have used personally, and believe has helped me avoid hamstring strains for so long, is the Nordic Hamstring curl.
A Nordic Hamstring Curl (NHC) is a eccentric hamstring exercise, meaning that the muscle is actively lengthening under load.
The importance around developing and maintaining eccentric strength in particular is due to research showing that hamstrings are susceptible to injury in the late swing phase of running.
During this phase, the hamstrings are significantly lengthened and under a large amount of stress, requiring high levels of eccentric strength to contract and absorb the kinetic energy to slow the lower limb.
“If you don’t have good eccentric strength… you are at risk of a hamstring injury!”
You will reduce your risk of hamstring injury by adding into your training a NORDIC HAMSTRING CURL.
Check out the picture below for an example of a Nordic hamstring curl.