Hamstrings help

Hi

After a good session last night, my hamstrings feel quite tight and bruised.

Do you think Doing leg curl and on the spot kick backs will help or hinder?



Dave.

Hi Dave

If your hamstrings feel tight a very light session may help recovery rather than doing nothing. ie 50% intensity and no more. Avoid putting too much tension through the muscle.

What you need is a kind of pumping/rythmic cool down type session to increase blood supply and bring in fresh oxygenated blood thus recycling any byproducts from hard sessions such as latic acid CO2 etc. Massage would be a really good way to help as you would also have a positive effect on the nervous and lymphatic system.

So in theory very light hamstring curls of reps higher than 20 may help. Just remember though don't go to failure as this will just add more tension and waste products etc.

As Muscles work in pairs make sure you have correct ratio of strength between quads and hams. Plus your Glutes could also be causing a tightening of the hamstrings so make sure the muscles around your hips are well maintained with stretching and strengthening as they all fire synergystically.

Paradoxically some people get tight hamstrings because they are too weak and stretched, so if this keeps happening try to find the root cause.. the answer usually lies in your posture and training methods and is caused by overuse or imbalance.

Hope that helps

kind regards
Mark

Cheers Mark

its always nice to get technical answers and know whats best, rather than struggle through and hope its going to work for the best

I think it was overuse cos I hadn't trained for a while and rushed back into things.

No worries

I realised after I posted that it was about a month ago you had the problem, bit late then, hehe.

Thanks for your kind welcome in the intro posts.

I look forward to meeting you this weekend on the BCA course.

Mark