♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Get the energy level up.
- Whoa, yes!
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the Internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna present five simple steps
to heal hamstring strain fast.
It's a very commonly injured muscle,
isn't it Bob? - It is.
It's one of the most injured muscles in my opinion.
Not only that, but it's also one of the muscles
that has a lot of tone or tightens up
with a lot of people, so it's just
one of those muscles that is a problem.
- It's a muscle you see if someone is playing
weekend softball, and they're running
to first base, and all of a sudden they--
- Right.
- They're grabbing the back of their thigh.
- So, this is a common injury.
We've had comments on this.
As well as I just,
- You just did it yourself.
- Yep, I'm rehabbing through it right now.
We're gonna talk about this in detail but--
- Talk about the steps you went through.
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- There ya go.
- Alright, Brad, let's, yeah you just hurt
your hamstring, how'd your hurt yours?
- Well that's a good question, Bob.
I was, I've been very happy this winter
doing treadmill running which is not
my favorite because I like to run outside,
and don't like to run in the snow
which we had a lot of this year.
So I found a fun thing to do on the treadmill.
I started interval HIIT training, H-I-I-T,
and I would, they have a little track on there,
and so I was going fast and then slow.
I was spreading it out, 90 seconds at a higher speed
then I'd jog for about whatever time it took
to get around the track which was about
a minute and 20 seconds.
And then I go for 90 seconds on the
fast speed which is 10 miles an hour.
And you know, I did the stupidest thing.
And I do these things, I thought, I was done,
my interval training was done and I thought
I'm just gonna go see if I can do
12 miles an hour for 30 seconds.
Just because, it's a challenge.
So I got it up and for me that was
a pretty good pace, and I'm running along,
and I got five seconds left to go,
and I felt that hamstring just tear
and it's like oh I gotta get off this
treadmill so I don't fall.
- Oh yeah, you're lucky you didn't have
one of those treadmill fail videos.
- Right, no kidding, so I did,
I got to the side, turned it off,
and I'm limping away thinking, ugh,
just ruined my nice stretch and I'm
getting ready for some spring running, you know.
But anyways, this is the recipe that I use
and that happened on a Wednesday.
Nine days later I started running again.
Jogging, and we're gonna get into how that progressed.
These five steps, so the very first thing
is I rested it, I protected it, you know I limped.
It wasn't a tear, it was a strain.
And you know mild to moderate I would put it at.
- Mild tears are small tears.
- Right.
So cold pack, you know put a cold pack
and it felt really good.
You know, getting in my car in the winter time
and this cold weather I was just sitting on
the cold seat when I got in the car.
That felt good!
Use your cold pack at home, and then,
NSAID, you know, ibuprofen.
- Did you take ibuprofen? - Oh yeah.
- So you always wanna make sure if you
take ibuprofen, you're taking it with a meal
or taking it with a piece of bread, or something.
- I know, Chris the pharmacist, he says you know
milk is a really good base to go along with it too.
And you're gonna take, depending on your weight,
three or four pills typically.
That information you know we can get on our video.
The big thing here, a lot of people think
when you strain or pull a muscle and it's
tight and sore, stretch it out.
- Yeah stretch it out, make it feel better.
- Do not stretch it out, the muscle just
got literally micro tears in it,
or maybe a bigger tear, and if you stretch it,
it just re-- - It's making things worse.
- Reinjures it, so do not stretch it initially.
- Right, eventually you will, but,
and the other thing we should say Brad, real quick.
The tears commonly occur right in the mid
muscle belly of the hamstring,
and those are the ones that heal the fastest.
If you did tear up in this area here,
up here by the butt bone.
- The sit bone, yep.
- Yeah, it's gonna take longer.
And just that's how it works.
- Number two, okay, gentle range of motion.
My favorite way to do gentle range
of motion, Bob, do you wanna get this ball.
Which one should we use?
- Whatever you want, Brad.
There we go.
(inaudible)
- You don't have to use this, you can use
a stationary bike and go around and round, slowly.
Or if you have a ball, it works really good
cause you can lay relaxed, use your good leg
to help your sore leg and just work
back and forth, in a pain-free range,
you know if you get way out to here
and it starts to hurt don't go that far,
just work it in here.
And you're gonna do that for a few minutes
like three times a day.
And you're starting to put a little strain
on the muscle so that it's healing strong.
And I'll show you there's a really good way
to transition into strengthening with the ball,
we'll get into that in a few minutes.
Now the next step we're gonna do,
and this is all gonna happen probably within
like day two, three, or four,
when the range of motion is starting
to go well and it's not too painful,
the limping is getting better,
you're starting to walk normal,
then it's time to do some cross-friction massage
and get into that muscle and break up
that scar tissue so it heals good and strong.
- Also promote blood flow, get em a little
hyperemia and get the blood flow going, so.
- So if you wanna do some manual cross-friction
massage with your hand, this is something
that you may wanna do in a long seated position
like on a couch, or you could go on the floor
so that there's slack in the muscle.
You know, I'm not gonna do it I'm gonna have
a wall to lean against or something so you're comfortable,
and the fibers go this direction
so cross-friction massage you get it, I like to use,
it's a big muscle you're gonna get into
that muscle. - Yeah you really
gotta get in there and that's, look at how he's
kinda moving his wrist back and forth to help.
It's a heavy duty muscle, did you use the
pure-wave at all?
- A little bit, I don't have one at home right now
so I didn't and actually right there,
I can feel it right there, it's not completely healed.
So yeah I need a little more.
- Yeah he's really digging down deep,
and generally again the rule of thumb
applies here also, if you start doing it
and within a few minutes, like within 30 seconds
it actually starts to feel worse,
then maybe it's too soon to do this.
I generally don't find that to be true
on muscle tears, generally you can tolerate it.
But if it starts to feel better, or numb,
or the same, yeah keep doing it.
- Yeah get in there, and typically, you know
you're gonna do it for you know a few minutes
or until your hand gets sore.
Usually your hand gets store in a couple, three minutes
and you gotta give it a rest.
- And that's why, I just had a muscle tear
where I went ahead and I used the pure-wave
all the time 'cause I'm lazy,
and I just watch TV and I'll do it.
Then you can do it for ten minutes,
I mean it's not hard to do.
- So the pure wave is our massager
that we like because it's very aggressive,
it reciprocates, it gets in deep to the muscle,
and I was using this this morning.
- That's percussion.
- Percussion, yeah I think I used the wrong term.
And right there I'm on that spot right now.
This is easier, I'm gonna go across the muscle,
this is easier than with my fingers.
But use the same rule, if it hurts after
30 seconds or getting clearly worse,
you're not ready for it.
Now the other thing that works well
is the roller.
- Oh sure.
- Yep, let's get up here, now you can do
a little soft tissue work with the roller.
- So use a foam roller, there's a whole
post of different types, this is kind of a medium.
- This is medium density.
This will work fine particularly starting.
If you happen to have a black one
they're the higher density, they got
more carbon in the material.
That's fine too, 'cause you can vary
I'm using my right hamstring,
so I'm gonna put my left leg over the top,
and if you do it this way, you can.
- I was gonna say you wanna first
start probably with both legs on it.
- And if it doesn't feel like it's
getting in deep enough, then cross.
Right now I'm at the phase where
I need to be crossing, and getting in there.
And then you just, you'll find it like
right there I'm on that sore spot I wanna work,
and I'm just gonna work on that.
- And I use these preventatively, Brad,
I foam roll almost every day on my hamstring
because I'm doing those kettlebell swings
and they really work the hamstring,
and if I don't watch it I can tell like
it almost feels like it's gonna,
it's getting really sore like it's gonna tear.
So I feel-- - Yeah,
so keep the muscle pliable for maintenance,
as well as part of the rehab.
And you usually do that for about three to five minutes.
Okay, so the next thing, it's feeling better,
you're walking, now with me like I said
within nine days I was feeling better,
I was walking, it was time to start to strengthen it.
So I started to jog on the treadmill,
and my mic is giving me a problem.
- Oh, Bob.
- I am a big proponent of using the ball
particularly for hamstring strengthening
because I've already used it for range of motion,
but if I left my butt up on the air
and do the exact same motion,
that's all hamstring.
- Yeah, that's really working the hamstring a lot.
- Full range of motion, all the way out
to extension, straight knees, and you're gonna
bring it up, all the way in, now assuming
this doesn't give you any sharp pain
and reinjure it, you're gonna work this,
you know 10 repetitions, and then you're
gonna give it a little bit of a rest.
- You could start, Brad, right,
just pushing your heels down and not
lifting your butt up, and pull it back.
Just to, as a starting point.
- So you can just do isometrics.
- Yeah, well I meant pushing down and
pushing down at the same time roll it
bend your knee.
- Oh right.
- Like that, just like that, right.
Without lifting your butt up.
- Yep, and that's the nice thing
about the ball is you can make it,
this is not so hard, this is quite a bit
harder and then as you get stronger
and you can do three sets of 10,
like this, and it's my right leg I wanna
strengthen, my left leg will go over the top.
That works it a little bit harder, when that
gets too easy, I can just go on one leg
and I'm not gonna do that on my sore leg
'cause it's not ready for it yet.
- You're not ready for it yet.
- Exactly.
But I am on the treadmill, I started jogging
and the treadmill works really really nice
as long as you got some digital readout,
because you can scientifically progress
the intensity, so I started out,
I said I'm not going further than a mile,
regardless how good it feels.
And I wasn't gonna go faster than just
a slow jog no matter how good it felt.
And then, so I did that, felt good,
that night it felt good, the next day it
still felt good, 'cause sometimes
it feels good while you're on it,
but then the next day you didn't realize
it but you overdid it and you injured it.
So you have to take it real scientifically
and then I actually go every other day,
I never go back to back on treadmill,
that's my normal training routine anyways.
I do other things in there.
So then I went a mile, and then I went
a mile and a quarter, then I went a mile and a half.
And then the next time I did go up to
two miles, I increased a little bit more
'cause things were feeling pretty good.
And my speed went up from, I was going about
five miles an hour, I went up to eight
miles an hour was the last time I went,
so I'm gonna continue that.
Next thing you do is some weight-bearing
strength training, and to do that
one good way to do it is get a high step.
So that, you can see my knee's at
about a 90, my hip's at a 90.
I wanna use a stick, the boyer stick
to balance myself, and this will work,
it's gonna work the quads quite a bit
but it's doing a fair amount of hamstring work
too when you get--
- Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
When you're that high, now you're getting
into the hamstring and the glute max
a little bit there so it's a great way to work
the hamstring, how's that feel on your hamstring?
- Actually it feels pretty good, Bob.
I'm getting excited 'cause I'm gonna get
back into my high HIIT training again, high intensity
interval training. - Alright just avoid
that 12 miles an hour.
- Yeah I learned my lesson there, that was really
silly of me to do.
- We learn lessons even in our fifties, don't we?
Alright thanks for watching.