Our game involves lots of sprinting, kicking and bending over at speed — all motions that can result in a hamstring injury.
In professional AFL, each club can expect to sustain five to seven hamstring injuries per year, resulting in 16 to 23 missed matches. Locally, a couple of bad ‘hammies’ to your better players and suddenly your club’s season may be in trouble.
So what factors put some players at a higher risk of a hamstring injury? Well, thankfully players, coaches and medical teams across lots of sports all over the world are very keen to know this, so there have been lots of good research studies.
The studies have found there are both modifiable (that is, things we can change) and non-modifiable (things we cannot change) risk factors for hamstring strains. Some non-modifiable risk factors include being older or having had a previous recent hamstring, knee and ankle injury.
If a player ticks a few of those boxes, unfortunately we cannot untick them, and their risk is increased.
As a physio, I get more excited about the modifiable risk factors, as these are the things we can change and therefore reduce the risk of injury for our athletes.
Studies show that an athlete’s workload and fatigue levels are a big risk factor. If you try and sprint at your maximum speed 50 times during a game, but have not sprinted in the past month because you have been injured or on holiday in Bali, then you are at a much higher risk of an injury.
If, however, you have done every training session, gradually increasing your sprinting over several weeks so 50 sprints is nothing new to your hamstrings, then an injury is unlikely.
Our bodies adapt if we give them a chance. Do a good pre-season and avoid long periods where you do not put your hammies under high loads throughout the year.
Another modifiable risk factor for hamstring injuries is weak hamstrings, specifically weakness during an eccentric contraction.
An eccentric contraction is when a muscle lengthens as it contracts to slow down a body part. Think of a bicep curl, the part when you slowly lower the weight rather then just let it rapidly drop — that is the eccentric contraction of that movement.
It is the eccentric phase of the hamstring contraction during sprinting when the tear usually happens, so it follows that getting really strong during this phase is protective.
There is a really simple eccentric hamstring exercise that reduces hamstring injuries by up to 70 per cent. I'll talk you through it in my article next week.
Interestingly, hamstring flexibility has consistently shown not to be a risk factor. So it is much smarter to get your hamstring strong instead of long.
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