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How long until hamstring strain goes away
ftm42
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See previous thread https://forums.runnersworld.co.uk/discussion/348445/sciatica-what-is-it-and-is-it-ok-to-run#latest
Not sciatica etc. Now I've not run for >3 weeks, stopped going to the gym as I didn't feel it was helping my legs and just doing stretches from physio, plus weekly deep tissue massage.
Aches and pains in hamstrings still there after all this time, even when walking. How long should I expect to wait until I can get going again? I should stress that I'm not in as much pain - now at the stage where there is still a tightness, so am making progress. If I jog across the road for example; just when the lights change, so nothing you wouldn't do normally; I am still aware of the tightness. I am now tail walking at parkrun, but did jog home [<1M] this weekend, only to find that the tightness is still there so I walked again.
How do I know when it's OK and when I'm just being a woos?!
Not sciatica etc. Now I've not run for >3 weeks, stopped going to the gym as I didn't feel it was helping my legs and just doing stretches from physio, plus weekly deep tissue massage.
Aches and pains in hamstrings still there after all this time, even when walking. How long should I expect to wait until I can get going again? I should stress that I'm not in as much pain - now at the stage where there is still a tightness, so am making progress. If I jog across the road for example; just when the lights change, so nothing you wouldn't do normally; I am still aware of the tightness. I am now tail walking at parkrun, but did jog home [<1M] this weekend, only to find that the tightness is still there so I walked again.
How do I know when it's OK and when I'm just being a woos?!
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Comments
Time taken to heal will depend on the grade grade 1 weeks grade 3 alot longer .
Did it bruise when you did it?
Ive had this and it took longer than it should have as I was doing the proper exercises in the right order so it developed into a high hamstring tendinopathy.
Id recommend seeing a professional as soon as you can.
I just don't know what to do next, apart from go back to running through the pain for ever.
I don't 'grade' it and it didn't bruise - it never has. I can't actually put my finger on any incident that 'caused' it. It just seems to have developed over time until a point where I felt I just had to do something. It just won't go away and no-one seems to be able to get to the bottom of it.
Today walking into work - only a mile - the 'catch' in my hip is still there and occasionally I have to think about moving my leg forwards carefully. I'm only walking to works FFS. I am so angry and cry a lot in private. I have stopped training with my club as I can no longer keep up; I don't join my social midweek runs any more as I just feel so depressed about it. I have been tail-walking at my local parkrun and am so envious of those of all shapes sizes and styles who are still doing it. I am also marshalling at running events when I can.
I've been a runner since I was 18 and am now 55 - I miss running so much. I'm sorry to be a moaner
I can't talk to anyone about this as my husband is a complete non-exercise and just tells me to get my 'endorphin fix elsewhere' [nudge nudge, bleurgh]. He is completely unsympathetic. Most of my non-running friends don't get it either and now I am losing touch with my running friends, with whom I was never close, but at least I could train 2x a week with them. They are so lovely when I see them at parkrun. I just can't be sociable any more.
Injury = an opportunity to rest your body so you can run better later.
[just - when?!]
https://runnersconnect.net/running-interviews/dr-stan/
Ran 6k on Monday. Felt great - still running about 30secs per km slower than I used to. Taking it nice and easy, listening to music. Really enjoying it.
Then in last 100 yards I pulled a muscle in my left hip. Limping on monday night. Thought I'd be ok for this evening's social 5k with my old pals, who I haven't seen for a couple of months whilst I've been building back up
But the ache is still there so I daren't risk it. I've just turned 56 & feeling quite depressed now. I've been a runner all my life & now I can't even go for a gentle jog out without risking pulling a muscle.
There's nothing 'wrong' with me. I'm fit and healthy but it feels like I'm becoming less and less relevant. I can't even go for a run to 'get away from it all' any more.
What's the point of it all?
have you done much strength work?
It reads as if you have a hip problem. I am not a medic but I did have a labral tear (well it was shredded according to the consultant) with cam and pincer impingement. Noone could ID what it was until an MRI scan of my hips, which I had to pay for as my GP could not refer me. I was picking up injury after injury, like you, with no understanding as to why.
I am not saying this is what you have, but it might be worth pushing your GP for an MRI of your hips.
Keep going, 2.5 years after surgery I am running, pain, injury and niggle free and aiming for my first marathon this year.
I am now able to run 3/4 x a week [never run consecutive days unless I really have to] and am up to a 7.5K weekend long run. I'm hoping to get to running 6-8K 3/4 x weekly, with a 10K at the weekend as a normal training week. That way I can enter a few 10K 'races/fun runs' whenever I want to, without having to train up for them.
That said, I ran 6K Monday night which was fine. Then got up during the night for a loo visit and my back popped a bit, so i was a bit sore on Tuesday. Ran 5K with my regular group last night and popped my back a bit overnight again! I find at the moment, I do seem to get twinges and pulled muscles for no apparent reason, but I'm putting that down to being menopausal and my body just getting to that stage where it wants to slow down?
I am now running a good minute per KM slower than I did prior to taking October off. Maybe I'm just at that stage where I have to accept that I'll never be anywhere near as fast as I was, as long as I can still go out and run in the first place.
I'm wary that you've had lots of opinions already, but just a couple of thoughts that might help a little.
If the muscles are tight or sore, this is either because they are subject to too much strain (ie. gait inefficiencies or over-training) or they are not sufficiently conditioned to cope with strains expected with normal activity.
If you've tried stretching and rest, you could try strengthening. Things like glute bridges and straight-legged bridges can be helpful, as can deadlifts and nordic curls.
Stretching is greatly overrated, having not been shown to provide any change in muscle length or reduction in injury risk, but strengthening has loads of benefits.
You may also find an assessment from a chiropractor aimed at addressing mechanical pelvic issues could be useful. I'm a chiropractor and often find mechanical problems affecting the pelvis when treating persistent hamstring pain.
David
I am turning to you for help as I have exhausted practically everything I can (from doctors to chyropractors) and I don't know what to do anymore so I am kinda hoping someone here may have gone through the same thing and could help me.
So, I've been running 5-7k 3-4 times a week recreationally for about 5 years now (all trail, no concrete roads) without any trouble (oh, I am 28 years old, played basketball since I was 6 and never had any injury). So this January I started noticing a pain that has been building up gradually over a course of 2-3 weeks to a point where I stopped running altogether because it was too much (the right leg was completely completely good). The last 2 months I have not done any sports and for a month I have been using NSAID (etoricoxib for 3 weeks and ibuprofen for 1 week).
The characteristics of the pain:
Location: in my posterior lower thigh, popliteal fossa and laterally at the knee. I can't localise the pain to a precise point of maximal pain, neither there is any pain on palpation. The pain is kind of like a mild cramp and it is migrating among the locations I've written above. The most accurate term I can give is that I feel like my leg is rotting. The right leg is completely completely fine.
I must stress that I have no physical clinical signs - there is no tenderness on palpation whatsoever, no redness, no swelling, no varicose veins.
It is present solely during running and perhaps few hours after running (but gradually less of course, it's kind of like weaning down). In ''normal'' situations I have no pain or at least very seldomly I can feel something briefly but I feel this may be my mind playing with me since I am constantly ''listening'' the leg in my head for any pain..
Before the 2 month rest, I also did some walkings of a few kms and at about the 4km mark the leg started to hurt.
During the 2nd month of the 2 months rest, I did walkings of about the same distance and didn't really feel any pain so I guess this can be counted as a minor improvement.
Yesterday I went for a run to see how is the leg. If I quantify the feeling I would say that the pain is milder for only about 20-30% and that I can last about 2 km (before the 2 month rest the pain came up really quickly, shortly after the run was commenced so I guess this counts as a mild improvement) before having to stop, stretch, walk a bit and then continue. After stretching and walking the pain is temporarily better but then it quite quickly builds up again.
I visited two chyropractors. One told me that from I'm told him, he's 99% sure that the ischiadic nerve is compressed somewhere in its path – possibly by the piriformis. Did some manual manuevering but I doubt this helped much…perhaps I should've gone to him more times but even then the corona situation quite quickly prohibited me from doing that…
The other one didn't really listen to me as much and just did some acupuncture on my hamstring as according to him, this was surely a hamstring strain…needless to say things didn't get any better.
Since the pain is presenting during running ony, my GP though about neurogenic claudication so I did an MR of the lumbar spine to exclude potential foraminal/spinal stenosis - only a minor L4-L5 central hernia was found which wouldn't explain my problems. I also have to stress that I have no pain whatsoever, not during rest and not during activity in my lower back, buttocks, anteromedial left thigh, from the left knee downwards and the whole right leg. I have not felt any tingles going down my left leg or in my toes whatsoever.
On MR of the knee a high signal at the insertion of the popliteal tendon was described - ala possible popliteal tendinopathy but the second opinion that I retrieved was it can easily also be a magic angle artefact which is common with this tendon cause it curves at the angle of 45 degrees to its femoral insertion. Also my symptoms and the fact the pain is still here after 2 months of rest and 1 months of NSAID talk against inflammatory etiology.
So if you read this you can now see why I am desperate. The pain isn't going away and running through forests and meadows means EVERYTHING to me. I am miserable and desperate.
So I was thinking some more and remembered that I have switched running shoes at the beginning of the January and I was using them for about a month before the pain finally became too severe to handle so I was kinda hoping this could be the reason for my troubles?? I went from Salomon X-scream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusQBNoWzk4) to La Sportiva Tempesta GTX. Of course, yday when I went for my first run after 2 months and as I wrote there was a mild improvement but still far far from sufficient. I do not intend to stop running now. I have rested for 2 months and I will not rest anymore especially with all the beautiful days outside. I will run through the pain and hope it goes away. The pain I think is even more pronounced because all I think about during the run is if the leg is hurting so I hope eventually this will also go away.
How long till the pain should go away after ditching the ''guilty'' shoes in your experience?
The only thing I am doing right now is stretching.
I am doing the 3 exercises mentioned in this article - https://www.runnersworld.com/advanced/a20858939/back-in-balance/, this exercise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh3gioc_x4I and then when I lie on the back and straighten my leg up high with an elastic band (basically the Lasegue sciatica test - speaking of that, I notice that the lateral part of my left knee starts burning at a certain angle but I don’t feel that in the right leg (there isn’t any other symptoms on left so as far as I know this isn’t a sign of a positive Lasegue test since that would mean I should feel tingling going to my toes at a much lower angle...just thought I’d mention it if it lighten up someone’s brain
Also, I thought about if this could be a consequence of imbalance of my legs but I can't grasp the concept. Is my right leg *too weak* so the left works more and thus hurts or is the leg the weaker one and thus hurts. Which one should I stretch more, the left or right one?
If anyone went through anything similar, I would BEG for your advice.
Thank you, regards Mike
Hi,
I am new to RunnersWorld, and I have taken up consistent running very recently. I have been a regular hiker and totally love outdoors. I found that I totally enjoy repeats of a small hill climb and want to even try trail running. I am a sucker for these things and I find it far more enjoyable than going to a gym. My aerobic fitness is okay, could be a lot better, Garmin shows my VO2 Max at 39. I am 35.
Recently, I went for a 10k run as well and completely enjoyed it.
However, in my last three uphill running sessions, I experienced a lot of discomfort, stemming from the base of the spine, then the buttocks and all the way to the left leg.
Although I feel like, I want to run many more miles , the pain just annoyed me. I finally made up my mind to go visit a general practitioner, and she has recommended an X-ray and given me a week of NSAIDs.
I read your entire thread and wished to ask for some advice on how to move forward with this. Should I visit a sports physiotherapist as well to learn back strengthening exercises, exercises to maintain good running form?