I had a former client of mine email the other day and ask for some hamstring exercises to relieve stiffness and soreness.  This female athlete suffered two ACL tears in high school in the same knee within 7 months of each other.  The first one was non-contact and the other was due to a questionable slide tackle  from a competitor only a few weeks after she returned ot full play.

Needless to say, I rehabbed her both times and she did great.  This girl is a phenomenal athlete to be sure.  She moves powerfully but gracefully at the saem time.  She is going to play for Clemson next year on scholarship.  After her surgery, she had some mild hamstring stiffness and soreness that eventually resolved in her return to play progression with me.    Since she needed some summer rehab exercises to knock out the stiffness again, I decided to put together a short video sequence of exercises for her to do.

Keep in mind, many field and court athletes suffer hamstring strains.  This athlete just had some residual stiffness related to her surgeries.  In the female athlete, we cant’ spend enough time strengthening the hamstrings.  However, here are some critical errors I have seen strength coaches and therapists make over the years:

  1. Focus too much on isolation exercises
  2. Rely too much on passive stretch/pain response
  3. Under emphasize eccentric proximal closed chain work
  4. Disregard the rotational component of the hamstrings 

Any one or combination of these things will lead to incomplete rehab or almost guarantee a recurring injury and chronic inflammation.  while I do not profess to know it all when it comes to these things, I do have firsthand experience (two torn hamstrings – ouch!) and I have put athletes with chronic hamstring issues back to full play in as little as 3 weeks when they have had up to 12 weeks of unsuccessful rehab elsewhere.  Magic?  Not at all.  It involves systematically tarfeting the tissue and properly preapring it for the activity to come.

So, I have included a series of 5 exercises I think you should include as part of a performance, prevention or rehab plan for your athletes in this short video (less than 60 seconds).  Not only will these exercises make your athletes healthier, they will also improve strength, mobility, and balance as well.