If you compete in any sport you probably would have
experienced a hamstring strain.  It hasbeen
quoted in research to have one of the highest injury rates in all sports, that
is for non contact injuries…knee ligament and cartilage injuries from contacting
someone or something else are even more common.

I have been pretty quite over the past few months as I’ve
been working on completing my Masters degree…to do this I just need to do my thesis.

I have to admit that it has been really difficult getting back
into the academic way of writing (it looks so different to how I ‘chat’ here)
but I have really enjoyed delving deeper in to my chosen piece of research.

I could off completed this a few years ago if I’d got involved
with some of the current research the university was doing but I really wanted
to do something that was useful to me.

So I started looking at some of the people I had dealings with
and what I could do for them as a piece of research….it’s really a case study
as it only involves one person but you get the point.

As an ‘in the trenches’ fitness professional, I had worked with
people in the rehab of many injuries and one person in particular had a problem
that I thought we could really look to put right.

As I said hamstring injuries are wide spread in sports and this
guy, who was a 200m sprinter, has had a long term hamstring strain that stops
him performing at the level he was (i.e. he is slower) and gives him some mild
pain when sprinting.

So I got to work looking at all the research on long term hamstring
strain and also how to try preventing hamstring injuries.

Now to be more precise for any techies out there he has a chronic
tendonopathy of his left hamstring at the origin.

In other words he has a problem with his hamstring tendon at
the bottom of his butt and it has been around for a long time.

With out doubt the most amount of positive research out there
has been designed around protocols that used a lot of eccentric training.

An eccentric muscle action is described as when a muscle is lengthening
under tension.  So an easy way to remember this is to think about gravity –
every time the weight moves towards the floor is an eccentric movement.

So when you squat your hamstrings and bottom eccentrically
lengthen (if they didn’t you’d just collapse the floor) as you move down.

If you are doing it on a machine where you have to put a pin
in then again it is when the weight stack is moving down.

So here I had a problem with my research.

Finding a training protocol that could be carried out in a gym,
and not need specialist pieces of equipment costing tens of thousands, was extremely
hard.

I did it finally and really think I have put something special
together.

Next time I’ll be sharing with you the exact make up and look
of the particular program.

Until then, remember,

Train hard, train smart, make every rep count!

Alex

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