After suffering a hamstring muscle tear, you should limit your activity for some time. Eventually, when your doctor permits, you need to begin physical therapy to fully recover from the injury. Consult a professional to develop a program that includes stretching and resistance exercises to help restore your range of motion and strength. You may also consider adding plyometric exercises to your rehabilitation program if you're an athlete. Check with your doctor if you suffer any setbacks.
Range-of-motion Exercises
Perform range-of-motion exercises to restore your hip flexion and knee extension ranges of motion after suffering a hamstring muscle tear. These can involve either dynamic or static stretching exercises or a combination of the two. Avoid forcing any stretch too far, as doing so may aggravate your injury and set you back several days or weeks in the rehabilitation process. Traditional hamstring stretches involve fully extending your knees and reaching for your toes from either a seated or standing position to lengthen the tendons on both ends of the hamstring muscles. Progressively deepen the stretch over time.
Static-contraction Exercises
When you're ready to begin a hamstring strengthening program after your injury, a physical therapist may recommend starting with static-contraction, or isometric, exercises -- especially if moving through normal ranges of motion still causes discomfort.
Lie on your belly and place your heel under a sturdy object, such as a low-lying bar, or have a partner hold your ankle. Press your heel into the bar, like you're trying to flex your knee, and hold the contraction for five to 10 seconds. Relax for about the same amount of time, then repeat. Progressively increase the amount of pressure over several days and weeks.
Dynamic-strengthening Exercises
A disadvantage to performing static-contraction exercises is that they strengthen the involved muscles in only one joint position at a time. Adding dynamic-strengthening exercises, which involve shortening and lengthening your hamstrings repeatedly, provides a more practical part of the rehabilitation process for a hamstring muscle tear.
Examples of such exercises include leg curls, lunges, squats, straight-leg deadlifts and stepups. Performing leg curls, for example, involves lying on a leg-curl machine, placing your heels under the foot bar that's attached to it and repeatedly flexing and extending your knees to lift and lower the bar, respectively.
Plyometric Exercises
Performing plyometric exercises is not necessary for everyone; it is for athletes who play power-based sports that involve jumping, kicking and sprinting. Even athletes should avoid these power-building exercises after suffering a hamstring muscle tear, until their pain has subsided and they've fully restored their range of motion and strength. Any plyometric exercise that involves the aforementioned athletic activities targets the hamstring muscles. For example, you might place a medicine ball on the ground behind your heel on the same side as your injured leg and kick it backward by extending your hip and flexing your knee.
References
- "Essentials of Athletic Injury Management"; William Prentice and Daniel Arnheim; 2008
- "Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning"; Thomas Baechle and Roger Earle; 2000
- The American Sports Medicine Institute: Isometric Exercises
