How Hamstring injury is Treated?
The hamstring muscles are a group of muscles that are along the back of your thigh. They originated from your pelvis and are inserted into your knee. The hamstring helps you to push and propel especially when it comes to running & jumping. Hamstring injury is a broad term and it includes from a hamstring strain to hamstring tendon avulsion.
Cause of Hamstring injuries:
Hamstring injuries commonly occur due to
- muscle overload,
- overstretched, or
- over-use, such as
- when you suddenly start running from rest,
- sudden lunging, or
- jumping.
- During running it commonly occurs when your leg is fully stretched out just before you hit the ground.
- Hamstring injuries are common in sports like-
- football,
- basketball,
- cricket,
- hockey,
- tennis, &
- badminton, etc.
Signs & symptoms:
A hamstring injury causes you
- sudden & severe pain in the back of the thigh during exercise, along with a
- snapping or popping sensation when bending over,
- other symptoms may include
- bruising,
- swelling, &
- weakness in the leg.
Typical health care handles hamstring injuries by suggesting- Resting the leg, Icing it, compressing it using the knee brace, or elevating the leg, other suggestions may also include taking pain medications, and corticosteroid injections, & physiotherapy. In some situations, when the case is severe enough, they may also suggest surgery.
But Elite Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Centre is a little bit different and adds several conservative methods to deal with your injuries. First of all, we spend hours with patients and perform a detailed assessment to get an accurate diagnosis and get to the root cause of your pain. We will then perform specific hands-on manual therapy followed by exercises, stretches & the latest technology machines. And also design a home exercise program that you can do at home to maintain progress.
Physiotherapy Treatment of Hamstring injury:
- Treatment starts with Cryo-therapy or Heat-therapy.
- Cryo-therapy would perform if the condition is acute to reduce the inflammation & hemarthrosis and also get pain relief.
- Application of heat when the injury becomes chronic to relax the muscles around the injury and pain relief.
- Then our physiotherapists started Isometric exercises for the activation of your hamstring muscles. Then gradually progress to active assisted exercise.
- Stretching of the hip flexors group of muscles increases the rate of recovery and hip & knee mobility, and also helps in minimizing the formation of scar tissues.
- Eccentric Strengthening exercises- this is an advanced strengthening exercise that is done against the resistance provided by the physiotherapist himself or by the resistance band or weights. Some examples are hip hinges, hamstring curls, Nordic drops, etc.
- Along with hamstring muscles their synergist muscles also should strengthen such as gluteal muscles, & adductor Magnus, etc by one-legged bridging, squats, split squats, etc.
- Our Sports physiotherapist will also do specific manual therapy such as-
- Soft tissue mobilization of the lumbar spine, sacroiliac joint, and buttock region.
- Osteopathic treatments such as muscle energy technique, kneading massage, Myofascial releasing, etc.
- Neuromuscular control exercises- such as the single-leg balance on the Bosu ball, single-leg windmill touches, etc.
- Kinesio taping for circulation improvement, and muscle support will prevent further muscle injury.
- Our physiotherapy clinic is equipped with world-class latest technology machines such as Extracorporeal shock wave (ECSW), High-intensity class 4 laser, super inductive system (SIS), Cryo-compression, Cryo-air, Targeted Radiofrequency (TR-therapy), wireless professional, & Combo machine, etc.
- At last when the patient achieves a fitness level for doing the activity of daily living, then our sports physiotherapists begin sports-specific treatment for sportspersons who wants to return to sports with-
- Agility training.
- Plyometric training.
- Sports-specific drills and training. Etc.
