Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #86: Gill1918 Project Presents Boo Schexnayder “Hamstrings Part 1” at the Illinois Top Times Speed Lab

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#86: Gill1918 Project Presents Boo Schexnayder “Hamstrings Part 1” at the Illinois Top Times Speed Lab · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey Yank, pumped for this. Here we go.
• 0:02
  Back in August, Randy Anderson of the Illinois Top Time Speed
• 0:06
  Lad hosted A1 day track clinic featuring two of my favorite
• 0:10
  people in the entire world, Boushek Snyder and Vince
• 0:12
  Anderson. He was gracious enough to allow
• 0:15
  us to record those presentations for right here on the Gil 1918
• 0:18
  Project. So for the next six weeks, every
• 0:21
  Wednesday and Thursday, Part 1 and Part 2, we're going to give
• 0:24
  you all those presentations from Boushek Snyder talking about
• 0:27
  hamstrings to Vince Anderson talking about Hurdle.
• 0:30
  Now, these were video in person type of presentation, so you're
• 0:33
  going to miss a little bit of not seeing the actual
• 0:35
  presentation. However, tons of value here with
• 0:38
  Boo and Vince every single week for six weeks in a row,
• 0:42
  Wednesday and Thursday, Part 1, Part 2, Vince Anderson, Boosh X
• 0:45
  Nader, make sure you're listening, make sure you're
• 0:47
  sharing this. And again, shout out to coaches
• 0:49
  like Randy Anderson, who is providing value in coaching
• 0:52
  education to coaches around the country.
• 0:54
  Thanks again, Randy, we appreciate you.
• 0:56
  Enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Gill 1918
• 1:00
  Project, a podcast series by coaches for coaches powered by
• 1:03
  Gill Athletics. Think of this as the Ted Talks
• 1:06
  of track and field coaching. Short, insightful, and packed
• 1:09
  with valuable strategies to help you grow as a coach.
• 1:12
  We're bringing the once a year track clinic straight to your
• 1:14
  ears daily. Interested in creating your own
• 1:17
  episode? Everyone's welcome to
• 1:18
  participate. Check out the show notes below
• 1:20
  For more information. Now let's get into today's
• 1:23
  topic. Probably the single biggest
• 1:27
  reason why we see athletes with hamstring injuries.
• 1:30
  So ultimately we want to look like the person on the left, not
• 1:33
  the person on the right. Look, she can't even get her
• 1:35
  knees up because the pelvis is tilted so far forward in this
• 1:39
  regard. Now the question you might be
• 1:41
  asking is, well, what's the difference?
• 1:44
  Like, why does that guy look like this and why does this
• 1:46
  young lady look like that? There's no hamstring God who
• 1:50
  cursed her and blessed him. These things happen for a
• 1:53
  reason. And it's all about acceleration
• 1:56
  technique. All about acceleration
• 1:57
  technique. OK, so for example, this is a
• 2:01
  pictogram. Interesting.
• 2:02
  One of Vince's athletes, Vince gave me this to use.
• 2:05
  This is a pictogram of a young lady accelerating.
• 2:08
  OK, let's take a look here. All right, first of all, we know
• 2:11
  when we start accelerating, we start with the forward lean and
• 2:14
  we work to an upright posture. Is that correct?
• 2:17
  All right, so let's look at it. If you look at the torso angle
• 2:19
  here, you see the torso is down. It rises, it rises.
• 2:23
  And as we go from the right over to the left, the torso angle
• 2:26
  progressively gets higher for the most part.
• 2:29
  OK, Now, what's also important to us is the shin angle.
• 2:32
  These pictures are snapped right as the foot touches the ground.
• 2:36
  So look at the angle of the shin here.
• 2:38
  That's tilted forward, is it not?
• 2:40
  OK, That's telling us that we're pushing backward more than up,
• 2:43
  but here the shin angle is higher and higher.
• 2:46
  So what are the shin angles doing as we progress across the
• 2:49
  page? They're increasing as well.
• 2:51
  That's how we accelerate. We start off with a more of a
• 2:54
  backwards push, but we finish with a pretty much a vertical
• 2:58
  push there. All right, if you look here, the
• 3:01
  tarsal angle and the shin angle not too far apart.
• 3:04
  Are they OK? If you look here, tarsal angle,
• 3:08
  shin angle not too far apart. Over here, tarsal angle's a
• 3:12
  little lower than the shin angle.
• 3:14
  Show me the picture where the tarsal angle is higher than the
• 3:19
  shin angle. It doesn't exist, right?
• 3:22
  That's my point is that this is a good acceleration and that's
• 3:25
  why when you see anterior pelvic tilt, it always results from a
• 3:31
  frame in this picture where the tarsal angle rises and the shin
• 3:34
  angle stays low. Makes sense.
• 3:37
  OK, I'll pull this out just so that you can kind of get an idea
• 3:40
  here. All right, this is this comes
• 3:42
  from the picture that you just saw.
• 3:44
  Right now, at this point in time, her hips are pointed kind
• 3:47
  of downward. And that's not wrong because at
• 3:50
  this point, she's still leaning forward a little bit.
• 3:52
  She's not upright completely just yet.
• 3:55
  If she were to take her head and chest and rise it here to where
• 3:59
  the yellow line is, the pimps would still be tilted forward,
• 4:02
  you see. So that's where that anterior
• 4:04
  tilt comes from. It comes from an athlete lifting
• 4:07
  their head and chest when they're accelerating without the
• 4:10
  pelvis moving to match that movement of the upper body.
• 4:13
  Does that make sense? That's the thing to take from
• 4:16
  that. All right, so there again,
• 4:18
  remember, Boo said there's no posture.
• 4:20
  God who's cursing certain people and blessing others.
• 4:23
  All right? It's all about the technique of
• 4:26
  acceleration. If you have an athlete who has
• 4:28
  anterior pelvic tilt and sprints that way, you give them to me.
• 4:32
  I'm going to point out some point in the acceleration
• 4:36
  process where that head and chest are lifting independently
• 4:40
  of the pelvis, and that's where that's rooted from.
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  It's a technique mistake. Posture is not a condition, it's
• 4:45
  a skill. It's a technique.
• 4:48
  We OK there, right. So that's number one.
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  That's probably by far the most common one.
• 4:53
  Some people will get away with sprinting with anterior pelvic
• 4:56
  tilt for a while because they're mobile and flexible and so
• 4:59
  forth. Some won't.
• 5:00
  So, but you're always going to have a higher propensity to
• 5:03
  injury if you have that particular issue.
• 5:06
  Okay, Now sometimes this is complicated by people who might
• 5:10
  have lumbar tightness or hip tightness, meaning if you're
• 5:13
  tight in the vicinity of the pelvis, flexibility might be a
• 5:17
  bit of an issue. As a result of this, that can be
• 5:20
  an exacerbating thing. Now, very seldom is this the
• 5:23
  cause alone. Like people don't pull their
• 5:26
  hamstrings simply because they're not as loose in the hips
• 5:30
  as they should be. But if you're doing other things
• 5:33
  wrong and you're tight, those two things will often build up.
• 5:37
  Can add up to a potential hamstring injury as well.
• 5:40
  See, when we run, whether we realize it or not, the pelvis
• 5:43
  moves. And when the pelvis moves, it
• 5:45
  produces elastic responses and stretch reflexes in the hip
• 5:49
  flexors and the extensors. So what happens is that creates
• 5:52
  a very efficient transfer or flow of energy from the hips
• 5:56
  into the legs. If the pelvis is locked and
• 5:59
  can't move, then that's not the case anymore.
• 6:02
  That's why a lot of football players pull hamstrings.
• 6:06
  They might have good posture, but there's no energy flow in
• 6:09
  that scenario. But we in track and field, we
• 6:12
  typically just don't lift weights enough to actually
• 6:15
  diminish mobility to the extent where this alone is going to be
• 6:19
  a problem. So again, tight hips could be
• 6:21
  part of the problem. Very seldom is it the whole
• 6:24
  problem in my in my experience. OK, why?
• 6:28
  Why? Why?
• 6:30
  Anterior pelvic tilt. All right, Some people are more
• 6:32
  prone to it than others. It could be you're running too
• 6:35
  much. Interestingly, running fast
• 6:38
  doesn't harm it, but running too much does.
• 6:40
  So your volumes are more of a problem.
• 6:42
  Your intensities are practically never a problem, all right?
• 6:46
  So generally speaking, running faster actually improves the
• 6:49
  mechanics, doesn't destroy the mechanics.
• 6:51
  If you're lifting too much or the technique is bad, that could
• 6:54
  be a potential issue. If you're not doing dynamic
• 6:57
  flexibility work in your warmups, that could be a
• 7:00
  potential issue. If you're doing hurdle mobility
• 7:03
  and you're trying to go through the hurdles too fast and as a
• 7:06
  result your kids are bent over instead of tall, that could be a
• 7:09
  potential issue. So these are all things that we
• 7:11
  kind of make mistakes with sometimes in our training, which
• 7:15
  in turn produce these bad postural alignments and such.
• 7:19
  OK. All right, OK.
• 7:22
  Another big cause of hamstring injuries is what we call a
• 7:25
  rotational deficiency. All right.
• 7:27
  When I run my hips turn, we call that an oscillation of the
• 7:32
  pelvis. So if I'm taking right now, if I
• 7:34
  take a step with my right foot, my right hip is in front of my
• 7:38
  left, is it not? Then I take a step with my left
• 7:41
  foot, my left hip is in front of my right.
• 7:43
  So what are my hips actually doing when I run?
• 7:45
  They're turning. Yeah, they're turning.
• 7:47
  We call that an oscillation. That rotation is important.
• 7:50
  Whether we realize it or not. Every time we push off of the
• 7:53
  ground in a running stride, there's a little bit of A twist
• 7:56
  that comes with it. Just a little.
• 7:58
  And that's supposed to happen. That's how we're designed to
• 8:01
  operate. The way we are wired is the push
• 8:05
  off occurs as the twisting is occurring.
• 8:08
  The push off starts at at the same time.
• 8:10
  The twisting starts at the same time.
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  The push off stops at the same time as the as the twisting
• 8:16
  stops. So they go on together and at
• 8:18
  the same rate. What happens is if we are
• 8:22
  blocked and not capable of rotating because of mobility
• 8:25
  restrictions and such, what will happen is the push off of the
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  ground is rushed and fires out of sequence and that'll produce
• 8:33
  hamstring injuries quite often. So what we have to do is make
• 8:37
  sure that our athletes are free to rotate.
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  So it's not just about straight line stuff, it's about
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  rotational stuff. And that's a big cause of
• 8:44
  hamstring injuries quite a bit as well.
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  Now, these rotations can occur in the pelvis, in the hips, as
• 8:51
  we said. But these rotations can also
• 8:53
  take place in the upper, in the back, in the thoracic spine,
• 8:57
  around the level of T10, kind of in the middle of your back
• 9:00
  there. There's a lot of rotation that
• 9:03
  goes on in the spinal column there.
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  When you Sprint, there's a lot of rotation at that particular
• 9:07
  point. If that rotation is stuck and it
• 9:10
  doesn't happen, then your lower back starts rotating it.
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  It'll do it, but it really doesn't like it.
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  And a lot of times that'll trigger hamstring injuries.
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  So again, if your athletes are just training straight, you
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  know, sagittal plain work, just training straight ahead and not
• 9:26
  doing anything rotational in their exercises or in their
• 9:30
  training programs, that often can be a bit of an issue in that
• 9:34
  regard. OK, So again, rotational
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  deficiencies, they never come from intensities, but they can
• 9:41
  come from values. And sometimes we just don't have
• 9:44
  rotational movements. You know, are you doing the Med
• 9:46
  ball stuff where you're twisting?
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  Are you doing weight exercise where there's a twist?
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  And importantly also, are you actually doing twisting
• 9:54
  movements or rotational movements in single support?
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  You know, for example, earlier in the in our talk, you saw in
• 10:01
  place jumps where a young man was jumping in place, but he was
• 10:04
  rotating as he jumped. Look for opportunities to
• 10:07
  introduce rotation in your program that will help you out a
• 10:10
  lot. You'll avoid a lot of these
• 10:11
  injuries, but more importantly, your kids will run faster as a
• 10:14
  result of it as well. OK, another cause which is
• 10:19
  involved a lot. This is normally the most common
• 10:22
  hamstring injury cause for athletes that have good running
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  mechanics and are flexible in their hips.
• 10:29
  It's the tallus misalignment, OK?
• 10:31
  If you're not familiar with the anatomy, the tallus is a bone in
• 10:34
  your ankle. When you train hard,
• 10:37
  particularly when you decelerate frequently, a lot of times that
• 10:40
  tallus will shift just a little bit.
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  It'll shift forward a bit, as you know from your anatomy.
• 10:45
  You all took anatomy, right? All right.
• 10:47
  You got 2 bones in your lower leg called the tibia and the
• 10:50
  fibula. They come together at the ankle.
• 10:53
  They come together at the knee. When that towel slips forward,
• 10:57
  the tibia and the fibula at the ankle, they become stuck.
• 11:00
  They can't move. You see, they normally move a
• 11:03
  little bit, but they can't move anymore because of the fact that
• 11:06
  they can't move at the ankle. They move excessively in the
• 11:10
  knee and the head of the fibula rolls a little bit.
• 11:13
  Now you have a hamstring injury, OK.
• 11:15
  And that hamstring injury is related to dysfunction in the
• 11:19
  ankle in that scenario. So that's the key factor there.
• 11:23
  So that happens a lot. And I when I see athletes that
• 11:26
  have good running mechanics and they're having hamstring issues,
• 11:30
  I find this probably in about 75 to 80% of the cases, to be
• 11:35
  honest with you as well. So this type of stuff, where
• 11:38
  does this come from? What causes this?
• 11:41
  Well, tough training loads, but we got to do that sometimes,
• 11:43
  right? And particularly impact and
• 11:46
  deceleration, like if you decelerate a lot or have to
• 11:49
  decelerate, jumpers get a little more than sprinters do because
• 11:52
  they're always jamming their foot in that board, you know,
• 11:55
  and things of that nature. But that's the key there.
• 11:58
  So what I typically do is I just take an athlete's foot and I
• 12:01
  always check the range of motion for Darsiflexion.
• 12:04
  So if I have an athlete with a hamstring issue or a history of
• 12:07
  hamstring issues, I'll just see if their ankle dorsiflexes the
• 12:11
  way that it's supposed to. I'll compare it to the other
• 12:14
  ankle that doesn't have the hamstring injury on that side.
• 12:17
  And if I see the dorsiflexions blocked, that means that
• 12:20
  typically they're going to need a chiropractic adjustment of
• 12:23
  that foot. All right, OK, all right.
• 12:28
  So those are the key reasons. And again, like I said, pelvic
• 12:32
  alignment or posture, pelvic flexibility or mobility of the
• 12:37
  region around the pelvis, rotational deficiencies in the
• 12:42
  hips or in the thoracic spine and this dysfunction in the
• 12:47
  ankle, those are the four key areas that tend to trigger
• 12:52
  hamstring injuries. Now, what's the one area I
• 12:55
  didn't say the hamstring itself, hamstring itself.
• 13:00
  And that's true. That's why hamstring injuries
• 13:02
  are so confounding is because the forces that affect them,
• 13:05
  'cause I'm sorry, the forces that cause them are come from
• 13:09
  above or come from below. And the hamstring is placed in a
• 13:13
  weird place where it receives forces from both directions.
• 13:16
  And as a result of that, quite often it becomes a challenge in
• 13:19
  that regard. OK, yes, Sir.
• 13:22
  Well, first of all, the other sports that they do don't have
• 13:26
  the repetitive nature that cross country has.
• 13:30
  You know, remember, we're track cultures.
• 13:32
  Running to us is exciting, but to the human body, it's right,
• 13:37
  left, right, left to the human body is very repetitive and very
• 13:40
  boring. So obviously the trigger is the
• 13:42
  repetitive movement nature of that particular sport.
• 13:46
  But that's what we got to do, right?
• 13:48
  All right, That's, that's who we are.
• 13:49
  It's what we have to do. So in those scenarios, this is a
• 13:52
  situation where it's a combination of the overuse with
• 13:56
  one of those four things that I mentioned earlier.
• 13:58
  And it's a case where you're going to have to identify what
• 14:01
  it is. And This is why with people like
• 14:04
  that, a lot of times, instead of doing all of the running,
• 14:07
  sometimes I'll do circuit training or something else.
• 14:10
  They get their heart rates up that isn't running just to break
• 14:13
  that right, left, right, left pattern.
• 14:17
  It's a challenge. It's a challenge.
• 14:21
  Prevention. What can we do to stop this
• 14:24
  stuff? OK, All right.
• 14:26
  The most common problem. We don't ask why.
• 14:30
  I just gave you some reasons why.
• 14:32
  Right. So this athlete pulls a
• 14:33
  hamstring right off the bat. We have to find out why.
• 14:37
  Is it the anterior pelvic tilt? Is it the ankle?
• 14:40
  We have to identify why because if we don't answer the why
• 14:44
  question is very likely to come back, all right?
• 14:46
  It's more than likely. It's not going to go away by
• 14:48
  itself. So every hamstring injury is 2
• 14:52
  problems. It's what are we going to do for
• 14:54
  rehab? But also, how can I fix the
• 14:56
  thing that caused it in the first place?
• 14:58
  OK. The number one mistake we make,
• 15:01
  though, is we assume the hamstring is weak.
• 15:04
  All right, The hamstring toward must be weak.
• 15:06
  No, not at all. You wouldn't be in track if you
• 15:08
  had a weak hamstring. There were no piano players with
• 15:11
  weak fingers. There are no track athletes with
• 15:13
  weak hamstrings. All right, that's it.
• 15:15
  Just doesn't work that way. All right, You're not going to
• 15:17
  be in the sport, and that would be the case.
• 15:19
  But a lot of times trainers will do that.
• 15:21
  And what we do is we start to try to strengthen the hamstring
• 15:25
  and what that does, it just fatigues it more and makes it
• 15:28
  more susceptible to injury. So what we start doing is all of
• 15:32
  these different hamstring exercises and things like that.
• 15:35
  I was working with the pro team in a sport that I won't mention,
• 15:41
  but it draws a lot of people in the stadiums.
• 15:44
  And anyway, they had they had a rash of hamstring injuries, a
• 15:47
  rash of hamstring injuries. It was like 18 on the roster, 18
• 15:53
  hamstring injuries, only got like 50 people on the whole
• 15:56
  team. 18 of them are out with hamstring pulls.
• 15:59
  What happened was, is that a couple of people pull hamstrings
• 16:03
  and instead of asking the why question the way we did, they
• 16:06
  said, oh, they must have weak hamstrings.
• 16:08
  So therefore everybody's going on a hamstring strengthening
• 16:12
  program. So they started doing the
• 16:13
  Nordics. You know what the Nordics are
• 16:15
  where you hold your feet down, and they started doing that.
• 16:18
  Well, now they're doing all of the same work they always did,
• 16:21
  but now when they do it, the hamstrings are tired from the
• 16:24
  Nordics. And what was just a couple of
• 16:26
  hamstrings exploded into epidemic of hamstrings.
• 16:30
  Why didn't the Nordics strengthen the hamstrings?
• 16:32
  Because it's not that type of loading.
• 16:35
  There's one Pro Football team I know they tested their athletes
• 16:38
  with Nordics and they they wanted to identify who's going
• 16:42
  to have a hamstring injury. They red flagged 15 people who
• 16:46
  were likely to have that problem.
• 16:48
  They were correct, 13 people had hamstring injuries, but only one
• 16:52
  was in the group of 15 that they red flagged so much for validity
• 16:56
  of the testing. So you see this is the this is
• 16:59
  what it's all about. This is the science side.
• 17:01
  Like this is the force velocity curve.
• 17:04
  Like if you're lifting weights, you're operating in this red
• 17:07
  zone down here. Like these are the tension
• 17:09
  characteristics here in the red zone.
• 17:12
  Like if to help explain this chart to you, if you're doing
• 17:15
  like a super duper heavy squat, like super heavy, you know, to
• 17:19
  the point where you couldn't move the weight anymore.
• 17:21
  Like if there was a little piece of technology we could plan in
• 17:24
  your muscle tissue that would sense the stretch on the muscle
• 17:28
  when you're not moving isometrically, it would be at
• 17:30
  100%. What this is telling us is that
• 17:33
  when we Sprint, we get way up here in this Green Zone, you
• 17:37
  see, you can't exercise in this Green Zone unless you're
• 17:40
  sprinting. You can't exercise in this Green
• 17:43
  Zone unless maybe you're doing plyometrics, for example, you
• 17:46
  see. So my point is, is that if your
• 17:48
  hamstring is weak, so to speak, or if you have hamstring issues,
• 17:52
  if you do Nordics or if you do RDLS and those types of things
• 17:57
  to try to strengthen the hamstring, what you're doing is
• 18:00
  you're operating down here in the red zone.
• 18:02
  But where do we have to operate? We have to operate in the Green
• 18:05
  Zone, you see. So that's why these traditional
• 18:08
  strengthening methods, often, not only do they not work, they
• 18:12
  often make it worse, make it worse.
• 18:14
  We're taking now we're weakening them because they're more tired
• 18:18
  as a result of it and result. So, so these are some things
• 18:22
  that often will trigger hamstring injuries.
• 18:24
  Prevention, overstretching can be an issue.
• 18:26
  All right, every track meet I ever went to, and I'm talking to
• 18:31
  a coach, there's a million kids that come up to that coach
• 18:33
  interrupting our conversation. And the thing the coach always
• 18:36
  asks is, did you stretch? Did you stretch?
• 18:40
  A lot of times overstretching causes the problems.
• 18:43
  So again, I always tell athletes that if you're feel tight or
• 18:46
  whatever, get loose by moving. Don't get loose by static
• 18:50
  stretching. Static stretching kind of
• 18:52
  fatigue certain proprioceptors and the athletes do feel a
• 18:56
  little looser because of the proprioceptors being dulled, but
• 19:00
  it's not a real fix. It's just a temporary fix.
• 19:03
  That's actually just a parlor trick, so to speak.
• 19:07
  Another mistake is investing in isolating the hamstring and
• 19:10
  trying to strengthen it, as we said.
• 19:12
  And one other thing, it's full ranges of motion help a lot.
• 19:16
  Like if you're a coach and you do squats in the weight room and
• 19:19
  all you ever do are the real shallow squats, that's all quad
• 19:22
  and excuse me, all quad and no hamstring.
• 19:25
  So full ranges of motion help and drive a lot of these things.
• 19:30
  So the full ranges of motion are helpful.
• 19:34
  I'm lucky I haven't. Yeah, I am lucky.
• 19:37
  But I haven't had a hamstring injury in my personal group in
• 19:41
  35 years, and people ask me why. What do you do that special
• 19:46
  three things? Number one, I know how to teach
• 19:48
  the running mechanics. So everybody's running mechanics
• 19:51
  are pretty good #2I value mobility.
• 19:55
  When I say mobility, flexibility, whatever you call
• 19:58
  it, I'm not going to lift the kids so much that their
• 20:00
  flexibility levels. Fall off, OK, and #3 Most
• 20:05
  important of all, I Sprint them all the time.
• 20:08
  Always Sprint all the time, always.
• 20:11
  If it's early in the year and it's not safe to Sprint far yet,
• 20:14
  we'll Sprint short, but I always Sprint them.
• 20:17
  But coach, what do you do for hamstring prevention?
• 20:19
  Like, what's your hamstring prevention exercise?
• 20:22
  Did you not hear me? I Sprint them all the time.
• 20:26
  I Sprint them all the time. So I'm always, they're always
• 20:33
  experiencing exercise in that upper Green Zone that we saw
• 20:37
  because I Sprint them regularly. All right, So first day of
• 20:40
  practice, So what, we'll Sprint sharp.
• 20:42
  Now they're in shape. Let's Sprint a little further.
• 20:44
  But we're always sprinting. And that's your that's your
• 20:46
  prevention there. That's the tissue load that you
• 20:49
  ultimately need. All right, want to talk about
• 20:52
  rehab. All right, so you got a
• 20:54
  hamstring injury, you can do everything perfect and still
• 20:56
  have 1. So let's assume that you have
• 20:59
  the keyword here being acute. All right, an acute hamstring
• 21:02
  injury, like the kid pulled the hamstring yesterday.
• 21:05
  What are we going to do today as a result of that?
• 21:08
  OK, first of all, hamstring injuries, the traditional normal
• 21:12
  hamstring injuries are hardwired to heal fast.
• 21:16
  Hamstring muscle tissue has a very good blood supply.
• 21:20
  So basically, be a minimalist, all right?
• 21:23
  It's everything is in your favor.
• 21:25
  Most of the time, these things take a long time because we do
• 21:29
  dumb stuff, right? So here's what we want to do #1
• 21:33
  an athlete pulls a hamstring. What I immediately do with them
• 21:37
  is I start assuming that, you know, they haven't been.
• 21:40
  I start doing loosening things for their hips.
• 21:43
  I start looking at foot and ankle flexibility because those
• 21:46
  are things that likely created the hamstring injury in the 1st
• 21:50
  place. Okay, So why not, right?
• 21:52
  You're hedging your bet. There's no reason not to.
• 21:55
  There's no risk associated with doing pelvic mobility stuff and
• 21:58
  foot mobility stuff. So we're going to do that.
• 22:01
  That's approach number one. But most importantly #2 gentle
• 22:06
  functional exercise applied to the injury site right away.
• 22:11
  Right away. So if I have an athlete that
• 22:14
  pulls a hamstring on Monday, on Tuesday I have them running, or
• 22:20
  at least moving. OK, it's not a lot of running
• 22:23
  like I might have them do eight 40s or nine 30s or something
• 22:28
  along those lines, but they get out there and they move.
• 22:32
  If the pain threshold, if it hurts above 60%, run at 50%.
• 22:37
  If pain thresholds at 40%, run at 30% or whatever.
• 22:41
  But you got to move. And here's the reason why is
• 22:44
  that collagen cycling is governed by functional tensions,
• 22:50
  by exercise. You see, when you tear a muscle,
• 22:53
  the DNA in your body that tells body parts how to repair
• 22:57
  themselves does not apply to soft muscle tissue.
• 23:02
  DNA has nothing to do with that. What tells the muscle how to
• 23:06
  repair itself is the tension being applied to the muscle.
• 23:09
  The tension comes from the exercise.
• 23:11
  OK, so I tear this hamstring, the inflammation process boots
• 23:17
  up, and then collagen proteins start cycling at the injury site
• 23:21
  to repair the injury. If I'm not exercising, that
• 23:25
  collagen gets placed in lots of crazy ways.
• 23:28
  We call that scar tissue. But if I'm exercising, the
• 23:33
  muscle is being experiencing functional tension.
• 23:37
  The collagen applies itself along the lines of tension.
• 23:41
  OK, so I'm a muscle. I just got torn.
• 23:43
  Here comes collagen. If I do nothing, scar tissue
• 23:46
  forms. But if I'm exercising, that
• 23:49
  collagen cycling process senses that tensions coming from here
• 23:52
  and here and it starts laying that collagen out in.
• 23:55
  The collagen then becomes functional muscle tissue instead
• 23:59
  of scar tissue. So if you pull a hamstring and
• 24:02
  wait a week before you do anything, that's potentially a
• 24:05
  week's worth of scar tissue that you've created.
• 24:07
  If you wait two weeks, that's potentially 2 weeks worth of
• 24:10
  scar tissue. So you got to get them moving
• 24:12
  right away, right? Whatever it is, they got to get
• 24:15
  them moving. And it doesn't have to be a lot
• 24:17
  of movement, but you have to get them moving for that reason.
• 24:19
  OK, so we're good. All right, So start running
• 24:25
  immediately. I can't run.
• 24:26
  We'll walk. Whatever.
• 24:27
  But you got to move. You got to move.
• 24:30
  OK. Because that's what minimizes
• 24:31
  scar tissue formation. And what I typically do is I'll
• 24:34
  do eight or ten runs of 30 to 50 meters.
• 24:37
  All right, coach, what about running some miles on the
• 24:39
  treadmill? No, don't do that because
• 24:41
  what'll happen is everything heals in shortened positions and
• 24:45
  that's when you get that grainy texture to that muscle or you
• 24:48
  just want enough running, just enough exercise to kind of get
• 24:52
  that collagen messaging going. That's all you ultimately really
• 24:55
  need. Everything again is below the
• 24:57
  pain threshold. So my first day after my
• 25:00
  hamstring injury, I'm out there and I do eight 40s at 30%.
• 25:06
  Well, the next day they'll be at 35 or 40%.
• 25:09
  The next deal they'll be at 40 or 50%.
• 25:12
  And every day they get a little bit faster until we're, we're
• 25:15
  good. That's all you got to do.
• 25:19
  That's really all you have to do.
• 25:20
  That's I get them back all the time, 10/12/14 days for normal
• 25:26
  typical hamstring injuries. Just doing this now, a big part
• 25:31
  of it is not what to do. A big part of it is what not to
• 25:34
  do. Like, what's the dumb stuff?
• 25:36
  So in short, what are some things that we probably want to
• 25:39
  stay away from in these situations #1 don't ice, Don't
• 25:43
  ice. You heard me right.
• 25:45
  Don't ice because icing slows the inflammation process, right?
• 25:50
  You're trying to get away. You're trying to, you want all
• 25:52
  that stuff to happen as fast as you possibly can.
• 25:55
  We're not trying to delay it. We want to speed it up.
• 25:58
  The only time I ever ice a hamstring is if it's a meat and
• 26:02
  the kid like tweaks a hamstring on day one of the meat and they
• 26:05
  got to race again on day 2. All right, if it's a practice
• 26:09
  situation, don't I don't like it.
• 26:11
  Just let it let it roll. Just let it let it proliferate.
• 26:14
  OK, You're trying to get to the other side of the wall.
• 26:17
  Number 2 is a big one. Don't stretch at the injury
• 26:19
  site. Don't stretch.
• 26:21
  All right, Stretching violently tore it in the first place.
• 26:24
  All right, So we don't want to apply, apply any type of
• 26:27
  extraneous stretching, you know, and pay close attention to your
• 26:30
  athletes when they have hamstring injuries.
• 26:32
  What are they doing? They're always picking at it,
• 26:35
  trying to stretch it, see if it's still there and that type
• 26:37
  of thing. You know, this is the analogy I
• 26:39
  use with them. Have you ever had a sore in your
• 26:42
  mouth and you touch it with your tongue and it hurts, But what do
• 26:47
  you do anyway? You keep touching it to see if
• 26:50
  it's that. Don't do that to your hamstring.
• 26:52
  Like that's what we don't want to do, right?
• 26:55
  And I don't even want like a massage therapist or anybody
• 26:57
  putting their hands on that hamstring injury for the 1st 345
• 27:01
  days, the cans off. Just let it go and functionally
• 27:04
  exercise it. That's all you ultimately really
• 27:07
  want to do in those scenarios. I know it sounds simple, but
• 27:11
  it's not so much about what to do, it's more about what not to
• 27:14
  do in those scenarios. OK, every once in a while you
• 27:17
  get a case that's a little more complicated because the tendon
• 27:20
  is involved. If the tendon is involved, that
• 27:24
  means it's going to take a little bit longer and it's going
• 27:27
  to be a 2 step rehab. OK, so one time I had a
• 27:29
  sprinter, good sprinter, he says.
• 27:32
  He told me, you know, he had pulled his hamstring.
• 27:35
  So he got an MRI and not only was the hamstring torn, but
• 27:41
  there was a little bit of a tear in the tendon, a little
• 27:43
  tendinosis, a little tendon issue there.
• 27:45
  Not a major one, but a minor tendon issue.
• 27:48
  So what I did with him and what I typically do in these cases is
• 27:52
  I put him through those easy build UPS like we just
• 27:54
  described. Then after about 12 days or so,
• 27:57
  maybe 14 days, the soft tissue portion of the injury was fine,
• 28:02
  the tendon was not. Tendons are different than
• 28:05
  muscle tissue. Muscle tissue responds to gentle
• 28:08
  exercise. Tendons don't.
• 28:11
  You got to work a tendon to really get it to do something.
• 28:14
  So this young man, after the hamstring is ready.
• 28:18
  I knew he was a tough guy, but he kind of can still feel it,
• 28:21
  Coach, I still feel it. I say, yeah, that's the tendon.
• 28:24
  He says, well, how are we going to get the pain out of the
• 28:25
  tendon? I said, you're going to have to,
• 28:26
  like, load the tendon. Well, how do I do that?
• 28:29
  He says, do you mind sprinting this weekend?
• 28:32
  And he kind of raised his eyebrows.
• 28:33
  But I knew he was a tough guy and he really trusted me.
• 28:36
  So he's a 10/1 Sperner. He goes out there and runs 10/7.
• 28:39
  He's not happy, but I said that's something we have to go
• 28:42
  through. His next race was 10/6.
• 28:44
  His third race was 10 flat. So my point is, is that the
• 28:48
  tendons don't really respond to nothing.
• 28:51
  You really got to load them. Now if he had a bad tendon
• 28:54
  injury, I would have used isometric exercise or something
• 28:57
  like that. But tendons don't get well by
• 28:59
  themselves. You have to load them.
• 29:02
  There have been cases where I've used jumping exercises, apply
• 29:05
  metric exercises of different types in order to get to the to
• 29:08
  the to the tendons. OK, And by the way, if you got a
• 29:12
  training room with machines in it, ultrasounds, not bad.
• 29:16
  Shockwave is good, but I doubt that any of y'all can afford
• 29:19
  that. OK, so that's it.
• 29:25
  I mean, as simple as it is, if again, and, and you all know,
• 29:29
  I'm sure that if the hamstring injury is really up high or
• 29:32
  really down low, there's likely to be tendons involvements.
• 29:35
  That's why when an athlete like pulls A hamstring and is dead in
• 29:39
  the middle, I feel pretty good about it.
• 29:41
  I know it's like 12 days tops, but above or below high or
• 29:45
  whatever that could often be. A lot of times their mechanics
• 29:48
  are going to dictate where that injury takes place.
• 29:51
  Like the hamstring injuries that are associated more with the
• 29:54
  drive or the push off, they're typically going to be higher,
• 29:57
  but those that are more associated with the opening of
• 30:00
  the knee, they're typically a little lower as well.
• 30:02
  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
• 30:06
  episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
• 30:09
  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
• 30:13
  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
• 30:16
  The Gill 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
• 30:21
  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
• 30:24
  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
• 30:28
  there. So please get a hold of me,
• 30:30
  e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
• 30:35
  and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
• 30:38
  Project. Hope you enjoy today, they will
• 30:40
  see you tomorrow.