My hamstring tear recovery: what I loaded and when

Hey everyone, it's Sebastian. I'm one of the hosts of the Restoring Human Movement podcast. Thanks for joining the Movement Movement. If this is your first time in the show, this is a slightly different format and we're attempting to put shorter format podcasts together nowadays because we found that if we tend to wait and make long format only, we don't get enough information out there to you guys and I think we have a lot to share. We specialize in working with people with lower quarter conditions, especially groin, hip, low back, knee, and foot problems such as plantar fasciitis. So if you guys need help at any point, reach out to us and we can potentially help you virtually or in person.

Now the short one here that we're going to cover is mainly, it's just my own story. A few months back, I tore my hamstring and I did a podcast about it as I had experienced that or the experiences that I had over the first few days. Just a short recap on things and just to let you know where I'm at right now, I am perfectly fine. I feel no pain in the hamstrings and I'm sprinting as much as I want to and I play recreational baseball. I stole three bases last week. I feel very good about that, but just more to paint a picture that I'm running hard and I'm not really having any fallout from that in the hamstring.

But originally, I could not drive my car back home. It was my right leg. So to lift my foot off of the pedal was absolute murder. And so I had to drive back 45 minutes from the game where it happened, originally turning first base to go to second base in a baseball game. And I felt a pop and immediately could not walk. And I had to drive back using the other foot. To walk upstairs was insanely hard. I had to drag that leg up. I had to use my arms to drag my leg up. It was actually easier to crawl upstairs than we have a flight of steps in our house. And so I can tell you with full certainty that this time around, I did have a hamstring tear years ago.

It did have a bruise. The reason I keep saying the bruising thing is because if it didn't bruise, it probably didn't tear. If it started to bundle up and there was no bruising forming, there was no pop, it was probably a strain. And although I didn't have an MRI to confirm it, I did see a bruise and there was like immediate disability associated to it. And I felt the pop. It felt like someone shot me. And that is the coincidental, coincidental, coincidental, typical type of history associated to a muscular tear. Now, I recovered this time faster than I did the last few times, or the last time.

I can full confidence with that. I remember last time I was running a little altered for quite a few months after the fact. And this time, although I did have some troubles for the first few months. And there were certainly things that I couldn't do. I kept more activity around this time because I was better educated about it. The next day, actually, I went to work. And as you know, I work with people with injuries. And so, I had to demonstrate something called a sissy squat. A sissy squat is a heel elevated squatting exercise that you can add weight to, which is very knee dominant or quad dominant.

So, it basically works the quads. So, I had to demonstrate it. And all day, I had been demonstrating, like, single leg hinges, like, single leg RDLs, basically hip dominant or hamstring dominant activities. And I would kind of forget. Like, I would do my right leg first. I'm like, okay, so you have a problem on your right leg. By the way, I'm going to demonstrate the left because I can't do that today. You know, and so, I would demonstrate the other side. But when I got to the sissy squat, I can actually do it. And it was crazy. It just reminded me of, like, oh, my God. I can actually do stuff.

And it makes sense because when you think about the things that, the way that your body compensates to get around the pain when it's happening, it's actually the movements that you could actually load and challenge almost immediately. And so, rather than me getting up from the floor or out of a chair by using my hamstrings or my glutes, because that's a posterior chain type of hip dominant scenario, using my knees was actually fine. Using my quads was fine. And I was able to do that exercise with no problem, put fairly challenging weight on it, did a fairly challenging amount of reps, and had no problem whatsoever.

And it made me think about what else I could actually do. And so, I remember the previous day, I had crawled up the stairs, and it was very painful to do, especially bringing my leg, the involved leg, up to the next step. That was still painful because I had to, it requires a hamstring to contract and bend. It made me realize, actually, at that moment, like when you lift your leg up, like if the foot is extended in front of you, like the hamstrings or the knees not moving, it's a consistent angle, it's okay. But if the knee bends like the foot's bending behind you like you're running, that's murder.

And I had to do that to get up the stairs. But what I could do is, once I got to the top, rather than crawling, I can actually slug myself across the floor. Imagine doing a plank where I'm pulling with my arms and I felt my belly really start to contract. So, I'm pulling myself across the carpet of the floor. And so, there's no pain with that. And what that means is, I can load a plank. So, I did. I loaded a plank, a side plank, a side bridge, a squat pattern, and I did not do a deadlifting or hip dominant pattern for probably about three weeks. Now, this is kind of where that show stopped. And so, just to recap on things, I continued to have some problems.

Eventually, the first thing I did get back into my hip dominant pattern was to do a single leg RDL without any weight. So, basically, a single leg stance and I went and just touched the weight and came back up. And it felt pretty tight. So, I did that for about a week or so. Not every day, but I would just start to expose it in my workouts. As I mentioned, I worked around things. I went to the other things and just worked those because I know that working those can help keep me healthy rather than just being completely inactive, which is, I think, one of the biggest mistakes that people tend to make.

Now, the next thing I ended up trying was I did an isometric hamstring hold. So, it was a long lever bridge. And so, it was like a bridge, but your feet are longer. And so, it's more hamstring dominant. So, I just held that isometrically, two legs, and then I went to one eventually, and that was fine too. And so, I can feel it a little bit, but overall, it was fine to do. So, I kept it. And I know that after three weeks, the ability for the hamstring tear to then start transferring load is pretty much starting to get there. So, I can safely load the muscle and the tendon complex, which is what I did around week three or four.

Now, the next thing that I tried was I called them tantrums. I had my friend actually had me do them. And so, he put a band across the squat rack. And then so, he said, put your legs up there. It's kind of like a long lever bridge, but just put the back of your heels on it and just start kicking like mad. And so, it was kind of like a plank, but face up. And then I would start kicking the band down. And he said, is that hurt? And I said, no, not really. He's like, that's cool. Do that. And so, we did that, which is a little quicker contractions of the hamstrings. And then, finally, we went to a deadlift.

Not all in the same week, but eventually, I started adding deadlifting. And then, eventually, I went to a kettlebell swing. I was so surprised the day I could do a kettlebell swing. I want to say it was about maybe two and a half months out or so. Keep in mind, the whole time, I was going to the gym as well doing a sled push, a very heavy sled push, because I know I could do knee-dominant or quad-dominant work, which is what that kind of is. I would also do light jogging, if my leg tolerated it. It didn't always. And I would do walking or hiking, because it tolerated that. So, it all came down to tolerances.

I listened to my body. I slowly added a hip pattern in or a hamstring pattern in. And then, I did it as soon as humanly possible. Because I know, at least with working with people who have hamstring issues or low back issues or knee ones, I know that a lot of times, we are deficient in glute strength or hip extension strength. So, that's something I wanted to add back in as quick as possible. And the first way I did it was in week one was the side bridge. And so, not exactly the way I want to do it, but I did it. And that worked out okay. Other things that I did, which are videos that we have on some of our books, is called lateral squat.

I think we have a video maybe on YouTube as well. Lateral squat performance place, which is a frontal plane loading strategy. And so, it was a different way to load the squat, because I was already loading the squat in the forward-backward plane or the sagittal. And I didn't want to start provoking my knee. So, excuse me. Now, the last thing that I should bring up is collateral. What do I gain by keeping some of the activity around as I did? And what do I lose? Because everything in life has pros and cons. What I gained was, as I mentioned in the original podcast, was the very next weekend I went to a baseball game.

Did I play? No. I warmed people up. I was able to throw. Now, if they threw it low and I had to get my legs out of the way, that really hurt. I actually went in the bullpen and played catcher, kind of like sloppy catcher. I didn't put catcher's gear on, but I caught someone warming up, and he threw really hard. And there was a few times where I had to move my legs, and that really hurt. It was frightening. I wouldn't have done that again, but what I was able to gain was social circles. So, I was able to keep my friends around, because that is what makes me happy. Being at the game, playing with my friends, seeing how they were doing, and I have plenty of people that I played with over the years who lose their social circle because they have an injury, and they never come back.

And it's a very different type of life for them, and I've seen it, and I don't want that to happen to me, so I went, and that's what I gained. Now, what else did I gain? Well, I kept physical activity around, so I kept strength within the quads. I kept strength within the calves and the foot and all the tendons of the leg. I was able to do upper body work as well, and I could prioritize things that I have been neglecting, like planks, because I haven't been doing those in a while, and that can help out with lower back pain, which I've experienced in the past, and it can be preventative. Things that I, collateral, that I probably have experienced lately is I have knee pain in the front side of the right knee now, which is the same side as the hamstring tear.

Now, is that because of the hamstring maybe not operating well, or is it because I've been super knee dominant over those months? Personally, I think it's the latter. But also, I can now start to encounter more glute and hip stuff. The more hip dominant I get, we know, based upon a lot of the research with patellofemoral pain, which is a really common type of knee pain with especially males and runners alike, is that they have typically some type of internal rotation of the hip, usually from glute weakness or core weakness, and a lot of the male runners have hip drop. Hip drop is when they're in single leg stance, and a lot of times that comes from things attaching to the pelvis.

Now, the clear thing that I was ignoring was hip dominant patterns, like to get me to deadlift, ain't gonna happen. Now, I haven't gone back to a barbell deadlift, but I've gone back to a hex bar. A hex bar I've loaded up fairly heavy, and I can tell you over the last year or so, I've actually been kind of hesitant of loading it too heavy and doing too much because I didn't really feel super good after. Now, not doing it isn't the answer. Doing it better or having it coach better is a better option. And so, I opted to work with a local strength conditioning coach. I see him once a week. I do go to the gym on my own one to two days a week other than that, and I play baseball on one day in a game, and when I'm lucky, I have another day of the week where I get to practice for a couple hours and hit and throw and stuff like that with people.

So, I've kept the social circles. I've kept activity up. That way, when I go back to activity, full activity, which I have, then I'm not at a risk of having other types of injuries, although the knee is a little bit of collateral that I'm still managing a little bit. I should mention, too, that I tried to make good choices as I did continue to play at some point. I went back to play in a game after about a month, which the hamstring was not perfect. I know it was not perfect, and I'm not going to say I shouldn't have done it. I'm glad I did it, but things like sliding or sprinting totally were not perfect.

And so, I remember one game that we had where we were up quite a few runs, and I was on second base, and there was a pass ball, but it wasn't really super passed. It was like the catcher got it fairly quickly, and normally I would have gone and advanced to base on that, and then I didn't. And there was a runner behind me, and the runner behind me was later, he's like, why didn't you go? And I said, my hamstring's still not perfect. And he's like, well, you could have made it. I said, well, but we're up like five runs in the ninth, so maybe let's not. And so, I didn't take unnecessary risks that I didn't need to, because it still could have come back.

And I'm happy with the choices I made. I didn't put myself in situations where I needed to force myself to do more. I opted to take myself out of the field quite a few times. I opted not to bat. I opted not to run at times. And so, those are all the decisions that we need to make, and I'm mitigating risk rather than making it more risky for myself. So, this is basically the way that you can manage injuries and keep physical activity. And we've done this with many people that we work with virtually and in person in our office. I'd love to say that exercises are everything, and treatment, and manual therapy.

They're not. It's about management, too. And as you can see, there was a lot of consideration that I had when I was managing my own hamstring tear, but also there was stuff that I decided not to do with myself as well. I decided to hire somebody. And I know that a lot of you who are listening to this potentially may have said, oh, I can do all this on my own. They gave me all the answers. Right. But it comes down to management, and it comes down to sometimes you just don't want to think. And I tend to, I suggest that people do things the way that I, I'm trying to do as I say, not just as, it's a saying, do as I say, not as I do.

So, I'm trying to do as I do, or do as I say, right? And so, I opt to not train myself for at least half of the time. And I did my homework with some structure on my own. But I also opted to manage myself because I know what can happen if I take, make poor choices. And those are probably some of the most useful things that somebody can give you as you're recovering from an injury is telling you what's safe and what's not, telling you what has higher risk and what doesn't, and telling you that it's going to be okay. And that is the thing that I think that is missing with a lot of rehabilitation and sports medicine because people just want their diagnosis and they say, oh, it's this, I'll just do a couple exercises for it.

Or, oh, it's degenerative, oh, I'm not going to get better. That's all BS. You know, people need help and then giving them the help that they need is why we're in the business. So, if you guys are looking for help at all, reach out to us at 714-502-4243 or email us info at p2sportscare.com. We have discovery sessions or consultations that can help you out and decide if you want to work with us or not at a very low price. So, make sure you subscribe to the podcast, and if you like this format, give us a thumbs up and a review. Take care.