What To Do When You Pull Your Hamstring muscle During A Run

Back To Health Wellness's Thought For The Day

Written and Narrated by Andrew Siyabalawatte.
The scenario is Your mid run, You’re feeling good pushing through your routine, you unexpectedly spot a pothole in your path and quickly take a big stride to avoid it, then it happens. What can be described as a sharp tweak, that brings you to a halt.

Pulling, straining or even rupturing your hamstring muscle is never fun.

So What happens when a muscle is pulled?

The movements required to injure the hamstring muscle include extensive hip flexion with full knee extension.

A more severe injury might occupy a "popping" or tearing sensation. Swelling and tenderness usually develop within a few hours. In this instance difficulty walking may be present.

However let’s say in this particular scenario your hamstring is not ruptured (you’d know!) but you required to get back to your destination. You have a few choices, either to walk slow in small strides, grimacing, or dare I say it, run.

Before making a decision, Do a Quick Test - the lunge.

If your hamstrings do not give during this movement, it is a good sign 👍🏼

The lunge lengthens the hamstring as you lower to the ground, and then contracts as you return your body to the starting position.

You have assessed yourself, the strain feels minor, so you make the confident decision to run,

Run with increased knee flexion.

Why?

Running involves several factors, initial contact, initial swing, mid stance, mid swing, take off and finally terminal swing.

Knee flexion need to increase In the mid stance of running, whilst take off (knee extension) is required to keep the knee in slight flexion (more than normal. Your hamstring will adapt quite quickly to the new limited stretch response, which in turn will allow you to propel forward faster and without discomfort.

Further to this, It has been shown that increasing the knee flexion angle at ground contact can reduce the peak vertical ground reaction impact force, this is sure to alleviate load through the hamstring.

I must add, there is no one without the other, therefore running with a hamstring strain however mild can still make your injury worse, it’s that with this knowledge, you may just get over the fear barrier and get home quicker, in the process learning how your body works.