Hamstring tear recovery: what day two looks like

You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement Podcast, where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery. Hey everyone, it's Sebastian, your host with the Restoring Human Movement Podcast. Thanks for joining the show. I'm going to cover in this shorter episode today some details about my hamstring tear. You guys, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you've realized that I've had a hamstring tear back in 2024, around October time, and it was my right leg, which limited me from playing recreational baseball, sprinting, various different things for quite a bit of time.

And if you were listening to the show recently, you realize I actually sustained another hamstring tear, and I'm recording this actually on the very same day as I recorded the last one. We're going to release it probably in different timelines. But at this point, it is just before April Fool's Day of 2025. So that's about three, four months after the fact. Between times, I've felt really good. And earlier today, I recorded a podcast while it was fresh in my mind about the symptoms and what I've experienced, at least I did this yesterday. And so at least over a 24-hour period, if you want to know how it first starts and expectations of how you may recover, because I'm hoping this information helps you, listen to the old episodes, because I think that they're all very different in regards to what I've experienced on different days and also attitude associated to recovery.

And today is the end of the day. I worked an entire day at work. I showed people exercises. And, oh, I applauded. Long day. And I realized I actually did way better today than I thought I was going to. This, when I got back to the office, I decided to do some of the isometric exercise that I had discussed in the previous podcast. And I first did it very protectively. I was a little bit concerned. And so I did 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off. I did 10 sets of it. And this is based upon some of the literature associated to attendants responding or you have their audience. You have an audience. Their attendants actually listening and going to comply with it for about a 10-minute period of time.

It was very light. 10 seconds went very quickly. And I thought, you know what? I'm not going to say more is always better, but I can probably do more than this. And so I did 20 seconds, a few rounds of it. And I kind of stopped there. After I was done, I didn't feel any better, but I didn't feel any worse either. What I noticed was after about 10 seconds, I felt like it was just a little bit of grabbing in the areas where I had felt the hamstring. Anyways, that just intensified just a little bit, but it didn't last longer than the exercise lasted. And as I held it for 20 seconds, I actually felt the remainder like a whole hamstring more so like a pump start to happen, which was, I think it was kind of nice.

I stood up, I tested some of the things that bothered me previously, such as standing and kind of doing the single leg hinge and also extending my knee almost like if I was kind of halfway bent, like a semi-squat position, then I extend my knee backwards or that didn't feel very good. So I just want to test it a little bit. Walking was also provocative. Bringing my knee up towards my chest, especially beyond about 45 degrees was provocative as well. And so those all things stay that way. But as I was speaking to one of the interns who were discussing this, because not everybody gets to assess like a day after hamstring tear, so I wanted him to experience it.

If you listen to other shows, I've done this. This is my fourth time, 42 or three years old, I forget right now, but I've recovered each time to be able to get back in the plane. So I've learned a thing or two about hamstring tears and I wanted to share it with him. Now, again, things didn't really get better, but they didn't get worse either. As the day is going on, this has been just over 24 hours since I've had it. I can walk a lot better. My foot is not getting stuck on things like rugs as they were before. I can walk upstairs a bit easier. I'd say about 25% better. I still walk with a limp.

And, but now I can move my leg back and forth as I'm driving my car right here, as I get my left foot further out towards like the firewall of the car. Yeah, it starts to grab a little bit, but once I rest it there, it's okay. I did the isometric work in a few different positions. I did it with a big knee bend first, just to feel it out. And then I went a little bit more straight. I think the knee was probably, if straightening completely is zero degrees. I had it bent at about 15. Now there's an exercise called a heel dig, which is very similar to that. And so probably tomorrow I'm going to do the same thing.

Other things that I did do today successfully in showing some of our clients exercises was I did a plank series. So I did something called three month prone. I also did a hard plank, which are kind of brother, sister to each other. I also did almost like a Superman pushup, which is arms way overhead. And then doing a pushup, I did it from the knees. That was completely fine to get on and off the ground all day. I've been using mainly my right leg or my non-torn hamstring leg. And that's been perfectly fine. But at times I've been using the left one. I noticed too that just as if you guys have dealt with back pain before, you realize that like the major compensation that people end up using to protect their back is like a straight back position.

They end up bending their knees a lot. So they kind of sink down. It almost looks like their spine is super stiff. And then so the one that I've realized that's adopted commonly with hamstring tears and I've experienced this two of the recent times was that I couldn't do many things with my heel on the ground, like walking and getting my heel to contact in the ground in front of me. Not good. Even moving as I'm moving my leg up to the firewall of the car is when my heel gets closer to the firewall. It doesn't feel good. But if I leave it up a bit, it does. And so heel elevated positions feel a lot better.

It was kind of like a sissy squat or something that I could do as well, which I haven't tried yet until probably tomorrow is a sled push. But one way I tested it was I acted like I was pushing the wall over and I did it with both legs and both legs were completely fine to do it because this is a knee dominant, hip, more hip dominant type of strategy versus a hamstring one. Now, the thing that I wouldn't try is I wouldn't try single leg RELs. I'm not going to try to deadlift right now, but that'll come more over time. And probably the way that I'm going to scale it first is not depth. It's probably going to be, I'm not going to be as deep in range.

I'm going to sacrifice some of the range to make sure that I can get some load on it first. And I'll start to work my way down in range, probably not with the same load. I'll do body weight for a little bit just to make sure it feels okay, because I'm not going to lie. I'm a little freaked out by it, you know? And if you heard my podcast in the previous weeks, I'm very disappointed by it happening again. And the first time I was so upset about it, you know, it's, it's like, it's like the end of the world because it takes, again, it takes like a lot of your sports away. It takes, takes baseball away.

It takes cardiovascular fitness away or a lot of it. Now, things that I probably couldn't do tomorrow, and it depends how motivated that I am going to be, but I know that I should stay active. I need to stay active. And it's, and, uh, main reason is because we don't want, I don't want the remainder of the body to become deconditioned. I don't want cardiovascular to become deconditioned for the sake of allowing this one tissue to heal. So I can work my way around it. So probably things that I could do is I can probably swim, especially with a pool buoy between my legs or underneath my stomach, more of the arm fold type of scenario.

Another thing I can probably do is going to be some version of like an elliptical or possibly a bike of some type, maybe even an air bike will work. Okay. Cause there's a lot more pushing with knee bends and I may have to adjust the height of the seat to actually not let my, my knee fully extend. But also, as I said before, I'm totally okay with knee bend and heel up positions. So I'm, again, I'm aware of timelines here. I don't expect isometric to change anything for me right now. It's just more of a decreasing risk factors of having other collateral associated to this later, but I fully expect myself to be healing over the next few days rapidly as I am right now.

And my main job is to do the things that I can do and, but also not provoke it, not be dumb about it. So I'm going to do my very best to keep my head up and to be able to do the things that I know that are safe. If you're wondering what's safe for you, as you can see, I'm putting a pattern together and I'm doing things that aren't painful to do. And then I can decide how much I want to load them. But if you're unsure how to do this, most people are not able to do this on their own because they haven't been in the industry for a while. I've been doing this for 15 years or so and developing a pattern.

If the pattern resurfaces many times, it is a pattern like one time is a coincidence. But if you do an examination and figure out the things that bother you, like it tends to lay out a pattern. Once we identify those patterns, we can get a better idea of the things that are actually safe, not just theoretically safe. And we test them and get you active as soon as we can. So if you guys are interested in doing any telehealth tests, we are licensed in various different states. If you're going to work with me, currently I have licensing in California, Texas, North Carolina. And we see a bunch of people from a lot of these different states and it goes super well.

We can diagnose things this way and we can also put the puzzle together to make sure that you know what's safe to do. So if you guys are looking for a consultation, just know they're very affordable and we're very good online. We'd love to help you out if we can. So subscribe to the show and we'll see you next time. I'll keep you updated on the progress as it comes.