High hamstring tendinitis / -osis / -opathy... am I done forever?

Since when do they inject cortisone into your hamstring???? how much does that cost?

This is the first thread I have yet seen on LetsRun where every single response (so far!) has been someone actually trying to be helpful. Quite a switch from the usual stuff. Thanks, LetsRunners.

[quote]amkelley wrote:

This is the first thread I have yet seen on LetsRun where every single response (so far!) has been someone actually trying to be helpful. Quite a switch from the usual stuff. Thanks, LetsRunners.[/quote

Because any kind of injury could well spell the end of anyone's running.

I'd be furious if someone got on here with flippant posts.

To repeat or to add to OP I found a course in yoga did quite a bit to help. With the reverse curls on a kinetic apparatus. Time was (2 years) the healer.

I've struggled with high hamstring pain for the last few years. I too have tried almost everything recommended but even though I've had periods of pain free running it's always their niggling away. I realized I couldn't keep spending thousands of dollars on physio therapy, massage, orthotics, cross training, yoga, mri's, acupuncture, chiropractic ... All of them gave me pointers to a before and after run routine that allows me to run about 35 miles a week (I'm 53 and well past my competitive days so I can live with that). It usually hurts if I run for over 10/11 miles or do any fast hard work especially intervals or hills. It's a weird injury and mis diagnosed because no one really knows how to treat effectively. Biking and quad strengthening on my off days does help though as does foam rolling and pressure point with a ball on the belly of the hamstring.

Good luck.

A weird injury and mis diagnosed - frustration to say the least.

Especially when a sports Dr. can't get a handle on it. (swimming, can U swim? Dr. a swimming coach) He figured mine years ago was a stress fracture, so bone scan, CT scan, x-rays done after a couple of years of trying to get it better.

1991three years later, following when I injured it, ran a strong stage on the Jasper - Banff Relay and, God bless me it held up with no painful repurcussions following.

What is your glute strength/tightness like? A lot of glute issues are misdiagnosed as "upper hamstring" issues

Just wanted to do a check-in and follow up on this in case it's useful for any other poor soul who ends up with a years-long hammy injury.

In mid-September, I started seeing a new sports chiropractor who came at this problem differently from anybody I've worked with before. With his help, I've worked back up to ~30 mpw, and even more promising, have been able to pull off a few ~10 mile runs averaging low 7's for mile pace. I had been unable to do that kind of work before without having a ton of residual soreness and recovery time. This is really, really promising and I feel so happy about the strides I've made with this injury.

Anyway, some more puzzle pieces I learned in order to mitigate my injury:

I learned that my ankle dorsiflexion was terrible and probably leading to some of my problems up the chain. Chiro has me doing sets of ankle ABCs every day, where I'm really trying to make those little ankle muscles burn and get to the fullest range of motion. I've improved my dorsiflexion a lot in the past six weeks.

I've also been working on intrinsic foot exercises. (e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OOJ9AQ1AEg

). My toe mobility was really crappy before and now it's better. These are hard!! But feel really good now that my feet are more in shape. It's crazy to realize how much I'd been neglecting my feet.

I suspected my glutes weren't activating properly and I had the classic dead glute syndrome a lot of runners have. However, I didn't really know what to do about it before. So before, when I'd do glute bridges, I was doing them all wrong. Now I realize I actually need to squeeze my glutes while I do them. I know that sounds so ridiculously basic, but this was actually a revelation for me and has changed my awareness of in terms of trying to use those muscles properly.

I do theraband monster walks (to target glute medius) and "mindful" glute bridges before and after each run now in order to wake those muscles up.

After each run, I do some trigger point massage on both of my calves with a tennis ball. One leg is crossed over the other so that I can get more weight into the ball (e.g. like this:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aAnF6q88mU4/maxresdefault.jpg

).

I also use the tennis ball to massage my tensor fascia lata (TFL) on my left side, which is the bum hamstring side. TFL is the top of the IT band. That process looks like this (http://redefiningstrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/tfl-tennis-ball-rolling-e1423810711792.jpg).

Lastly, we figured out that my left hip (the side with the hamstring issue) has really good internal rotation but bad external rotation. My right hip has the opposite problem -- great external rotation, but bad internal rotation. So I spend a lot more time on external hip stretches on the left side, and internal rotation stretches on the right side. The idea is something like this (though be careful with knees):

http://www.yinyoga.com/ys2_2.0_asanas_deer.php

I've also kept up with yoga on a regular basis and do lots of lizard & pigeon pose on the affected side. It feels amazing and really seems to keep me out of trouble.

Hard to know whether any of these things has been a magic key on it's own, but I'm pretty happy that this has helped me make so much progress, and just wanted to share in case it provides an aha moment for anyone else.

I haven't read through all the posts. I'd recommend trying single-leg squats. Here's a good video- I recommend going down deeper and do it to the point of fatigue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJCA7pQ1o7g

I've had on again/off again hammy issues since 2012. The latest episode has lingered since last spring. I remembered a few weeks after seeing James post this on Twitter that I should try single leg squats. Within a few days of doing this exercise I started to feel that lingering "pain in the butt" start to subside. Aha, I had a glut issue (probably compensation from the actual hammy tear). Amazing how longtime pain like that can melt away with 1 exercise!

This post made my day. Thank you!

I pulled my hammy in March, and have been getting treated for it since. The first and second PTs gave me lots of gluteus MEDIUS strengthening exercises, but the PT I saw last week says it's my gluteus MAXIMUS that's weak. So I'm doing his exercises, and the pain is going away.

25 years ago I had a hamstring issue, but it turned out to be a spine issue: two vertebrae were misaligned, and pinching the nerve that serves the hamstring. So I felt lots of hamstring pain, but no back pain. 1 trip to the chiropractor and I was running again.

Here are some other things I learned:

1. acupuncture and dry needling are completely bogus, bull$#it modalities, and give you only the placebo effect. Avoid people who do it, because their other work is probably no more effective than a placebo.

2. The "kinetic chain" is crucial for runners, and where it hurts is very likely not where it needs fixing.

3. contrary to other posters here, time is NOT a healer. What you need is to find what's wrong, not rest forever. Reread the posts where the poster had the injury, quit running for a long time, and didn't heal.

4. every body is different. The same injury can be caused by completely different things in a different runner.

5. Sportsmedicine/PT is plagued by widespread incompetence. There are plenty of educated folks who haven't a clue what a runner needs. Doctors are trained to fix accidents and old age. PTs are trained to do stroke recovery, surgery rehab, and the like. Someone with experience with athletes and who is good is very rare.

6. It pays to shop around. If one person doesn't get you better or seem to know very well what's happening, find someone else. That's how you find the good ones.

I was crippled by this for months. I think what helped me conquer it was doing hamstring stretches with a rope where I let my leg fall over to the inside as well, stretching my hamstring in a totally new and dynamic position. It feels really awkward and hard at first but helped a ton.

Thanks for checking in and for posting the videos.

I can totally see how feet and ankle issues would contribute to this. I recently started doing some one legged toe raises i saw in RW last month. It's simple, you just go up and down on your toes on one foot. I was really surprised at how much i could feel my hamstrings working during this exercise.

Glad you're feeling better. I had it for a year. Foam rolling and stretching helped a bit, but what I found most effective is:

***straight leg eccentric strengthening***

key work is straight leg. I read this guy:

http://www.jospt.org/doi/pdf/10.2519/jospt.2015.5762

and I did (and still do) the treadmill exercise pictured in figure 2.

All the best man, try some arnica cream

Graston, too... Scrape at those adhesions!

I agree with the re-ordering of the kinetic chain and/or balance/gait.

It's something that's off, and needs to be corrected or mitigated (even if you've had it for a looooong time).

Workin' through my own right now...

I have this issue and am personally about to try something that others have raved about recently for this problem (tendon/ligament/muscle injury healing). Will report back if it works.

I had a very similar problem to this nearly a year ago after first straining my lower hamstring running downhill quickly. Then I tried to run a cross country race 10 days later with it not fully repaired and the tightness further strained the hamstring tendon just where it joins onto the pelvis.

At first it was completely debilitating and I could barely walk. Rest and standard rehab in terms of deep massage and light stretching/strengthening just seemed to prolong the injury. Sitting down was also extremely uncomfortable and long car drives were a nightmare.

After a month's frustration and getting nowhere I decided to tackle the problem from a different angle. Realised that I probably strained the hamstring in the first place because it was already overstretched/weakened, and also was not helped by hip flexors that have lost much their flexibility, from spending too long sat at a work desk. (As others have mentioned).

In my experience (42 years competitive running) most injuries heal better if you deal with the cause/s rather than fiddle around with the symptoms. Solution for me was to firstly stretch my hip flexors - this almost immediately seemed to improve my range of movement (ie the weakened hamstring was not having to fight the flexors as much) so that I could walk without pain. I also avoided all actually hamstring stretches (they are already getting lots of that from sitting) and have learnt to stand up and move around more often whilst working.

I then started back with walking - 10mins at first, progressing over a month up to a brisk 60mins twice every day. This provided a double benefit of improving blood supply to the tendon helping the healing, and 'naturally' strengthening my glutes/hamstrings and flexors (ie the opposite to sitting). And of course it kept my aerobic base topped up and my weight down too.

After this walking month I was able to introduce short easy running again starting off with 10mins gradually offsetting the walking, and after a second month I was back to my normal 50-60 miles weekly tickover running mileage - without any issues at all, and in fact I would say a bit stronger and smoother than before the injury. In terms of preventative maintenance I just do a little more regular hip flexor stretching and less sitting. More walking around too now!

As others have said everyone and their injuries are different but I thought I would give you my experience in similar circumstances.

nopeathy wrote:

Glad you're feeling better. I had it for a year. Foam rolling and stretching helped a bit, but what I found most effective is:

***straight leg eccentric strengthening***

key work is straight leg. I read this guy:

http://www.jospt.org/doi/pdf/10.2519/jospt.2015.5762

and I did (and still do) the treadmill exercise pictured in figure 2.

Great article find.

I had this issue in various stages of pain for 4 years. Even when I could run with a small amount of pain, it would hurt like hell to drive home as sitting in a chair like position was awful. I remember just always wanting to extend my leg when sitting as I was almost in constant pain when driving a car or sitting at a restaurant.

I was referred to an Osteopath for prolotherapy. It basically cured me. It is an injection of sugar water that creates even more inflammation to the affected area. The body then reacts by creating collagen to fight the inflammation. The injury needs to be close to the sit bone as the injection "kisses" the bone.

After the first injection, my hamstring felt like he injected glue into my hamstring. It felt tight and not sore. The good thing is: if it doesn't work, it won't do any damage, unlike cortisone - which didn't help me at all and can destroy tendons and ligaments.

Prolotherapy only gave me a slight improvement. I don't think he was injecting me deap enough. It is great for achilles tendons and knees. Somebody recommended traumeel injections.

A link on youtube showed an exercise where you stand one leg forward, one leg backward like a stationary stride for the traditional hip/quad stretch but you lean forward and do a deadlift in this position and it should activate the glute to time ahead of the hamstring on that leg.

If all else fails you could just try androgel😄