Another one of those Hamstring issue threads, please help...

Good luck. I've been working through something similar for close to six months now and it's not getting too much better. Search for the "Loss of coordination in leg" thread, which has some good suggestions for these types of symptoms. There are several diagnoses floating around Letsrun, so who knows what the "root" problem is. I think mine is a sciatica problem, but frankly I'm too skeptical of doctors to go to one. What I can tell you from personal experience is that hip abductor strengthening will probably help, as will core work. Time off, as you stated, will probably not help. I find that mine loosens up after 2-3 miles of running, but that I need to stop and walk for about 30 seconds once I get to about 8 miles of steady running. If I stop for just 30 seconds, I'm usually fine for a while afterwards. But if I try to only slow down to a jog, it still bothers me. Continued ART might be a good idea, and I've had deep tissue massage recommended to me (but it's not completely covered by insurance and is relatively pricey). One other tip- avoid crowned roads and slanted surfaces. Hills don't bug me, but road shoulders and crappy sidewalks are bad. If you must run on a crowned road, I suggest keeping the symptomatic leg on the lower side of the crown, so it is extended the furthest.

juamarti wrote:

http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/2005/0505/fredericson.htm

Thanks, I'd come upon that before when I was searching around trying to self-diagnose. There's only a couple of problems:

-The doctor wasn't able to reproduce any pain at the ischial tuberosity

-I'm told that doing elliptical is ok, as long as it doesn't reproduce pain. But this site says don't do any elliptical until the "bent-knee test" is negative. My time off diong absolutely nothing did nothing to alleviate any tightness, so waiting around seems kind of futile...

Why would doing elliptical, which doesn't seem to hurt, prolong the tightness?

Also, how am I supposed to strengthen the hamstring when it flares up just to perform the drills? The ART guy suggested I should do hamstring curls in reverse -- i.e. lift up with both legs, and then lower the weight with the injured leg slowly so as to stretch out the fibers, but I've only done this once this far, so I'm not sure how effective this will prove to be...

Also the site says cross-friction massage is good for mobilizing the tissue. I can't palpate it, though. My girlfriend has tried massaging the area, but there's this big disconnect... like, I don't necessarily feel like anything's the matter when she's in the hamstring, but the symtpoms persist.

Thanks again,

bump

Piriformis syndrome??

I had a similar problem - high hamstring pain that progressed to pain/tightness all along the hamstring. I also didn't really have much pain with massage. It turned out that my hips were out of alignment - basically, my right hip bone was tilted so that it was pulling on my hamstring. I went to a physical therapist a few times and got the hips fixed, and the pain has improved significantly (although it's still not completely better, it's at the point where it no longer makes me cut runs short).