Things You'll Need:
- Ice
- Ace bandage or compression wrap
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Step 1
Determine how severe your hamstring strain is.
There are three levels of hamstring tears. This article is about Level 2 hamstring pulls, the kind when you feel the muscle snap or pull and have trouble walking afterwards.
If you can still walk without pain, then you have a Level 1 pull. If you have a Level 1 pull, don't be a baby! I'm just kidding of course. Level 1 pulls actually tend to be the most chronic and nagging injuries. Unfortunately, I haven't learned how to best recover from the Level 1 pull.
If you have a Level 3 hamstring pull, the muscle has detached and usually the muscle lumps in places it shouldn't. If you have a level 3 hamstring pull, you're probably going to need surgery to rehabilitate the hamstring injury. Don't try to rehab on your own - seek medical help.
So for those reasons, let's focus on rehab for the Level 2 pull. We should have you recovered to full strength within 4-6 weeks. -
Step 2
Days 1-3 of Your Hamstring Injury Rehab
Most likely it's painful to walk, so the early recovery focuses on 3 days of rest. Your hamstring is torn and inflamed, so the first three days focus on controlling the inflammation.
The keys are rest, ice, compression, and elevation. Feel free to take ibuprofen if the pain is bad. Ibuprofen is also an anti-inflammatory, which is an added bonus for your recovery.
Rest - Try not to walk around much. I advise taking a day or two off of work, if possible.
Ice - Apply ice often to your injured hamstring. Shoot for about 15 minutes at least 4 times per day. I tried to straighten my leg while icing, which stretched let the ice work its magic to the full, stretched muscle.
Compression - When you're not icing the hamstring, you should keep it compressed. Use an ace bandage or a compression wrap around the injury. A compressed muscle more quickly heals its broken attachments.
Elevate - Try to keep your injured muscle elevated above your heart as much as possible. This reduces the blood around the hamstring, which keeps inflammation down. -
Step 3
Days 4-7 of Your Hamstring Rehab (usually)
If the recovery is going well, you probably can walk pretty well by day 4. Once you can walk comfortably, you should shift your focus away from controlling the inflammation and towards improving your hamstring's mobility and range of motion. Stretches and eccentric exercises work best. One good eccentric exercise is when you lay on your stomach and curl your hamstring towards your buttocks. Then you quickly swing your leg down towards the ground and "catch" your leg. The key during this stage is to not do anything that hurts. Your hamstring is still healing. -
Step 4
Week 2 of Your Treatment (usually)
Generally when you can comfortably walk up and down stairs, you're ready to start strengthening. Leg curls are the key, but just on the injured leg. Your injured hamstring has weakened and you want each hamstring to be equally strong. Start with low weights and work your way up. Again, if it hurts, think twice about doing it. You might be re-injuring the hamstring if it hurts. I've found it to be tough to tell the difference between hurting and sore, which is too bad. Don't worry if you're sore, that's normal. Just be careful not to tear the muscle again.
Massages are also helpful at this stage. When you pull your hamstring's muscle tissues, the recovery process uses scar tissue to heal the muscle. Unfortunately, scar tissue is weaker than muscle tissue. The weaker scar tissue is more susceptible to re-injury. Fortunately, muscle massages can break up the scar tissue. -
Step 5
Week 3 of Your Rehab (usually)
At this point, things start to vary a lot case by case, but once you can walk fast for 20 minutes or so, you should be able to start jogging and then running. Avoid quick starts and stops, which put a lot of stress on the hamstring muscle. I suggest 100 yard pickups - start by walking 5 yards or so, then speed up to a jog for 15 yards, run faster for 20 yards, then hit your top speed around 50 yards. Then do it all backwards to make sure you don't stop too quickly.
As you start running, don't let your top speed be too fast. Slowly work your way back to your previous full speed. Again, if it hurts, don't do it. You don't want to re-injure the sore hamstring.
Hopefully, your pulled muscle will be completely healed sometime between weeks 4 and 6!
