Not your usual hamstring strain...

[physiomitch]

I agree with Canuck in as much as too much exercise without enough rest can be harmful. I heard a great saying the other day from a lecturer at Loughborough Uni: "The body does not get fit through exercise, it gets fit through recovering from exercise."

What my experience shows is that bilateral symptoms often indicate a central component. Stiffness is generally a soft tissue problem, not muscle or joint, as all muscles and joints are covered in an inelastic tissue, fascia, which holds everything in place, seperates muscles , covers nerves arteries organs, in fact everything in the body functions due to its protective covering, the fascia. One thing that can cause reduced flexibility is a reduced blood flow rate to the soft tissues. In your case it would not be unusual that you have purely gone into overload, which means the nervous system contolling your rate of blood flow (the sympathetic nervous system), has become fatigued from over demand. This results in a slower rate of blood flow, and thus can result in stiffness, weakness and therefore poor performance. In the hamstrings the tightness occurs in the sheath of the muscle, but the tension will be felt at either end as this is where the nerve supply is dominant to register stretch/overstretch. The pain is merely the body's way of saying you have reduced flexibility, it does not mean the hamstrings are to blame.

generally you would have got away with a lot by keeping active, and byhaving soft tissue massage, but then you went on holiday and obviously the demand was less, so your rate of blood flow naturally would have slowed, but if the nervous system controlling this was fatigued the rate would have slowed below normal levels, thus starving the fascia, resulting in shrinkage, a natural response to reduced blood flow or dehydration. So now you want to begin again te tissues have tightened and as they do not spontaneously let go, they remain tight no matter how much you stretch...remember, stretching will only maintain what you have it will not increase range of movement in the short term, as your flexibility is governed by the inelastic fascia, not the muscles. My suggestion is you seek someone who treats the sympathetic nervous system and also uses myofascial release massage to release any shrinkage that has taken place. I would also suggest someone physically test the strength of your hips, as if there is any weakness there, your hamstring will be forced to compensate for this weakness and thus again be overloaded. This can also lead to tightness of the fascia of the hamstrings.

Hope this helps

Pete

[bikelet]

I would like to add another reference to Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (Bloomfield et al). If you are truly wanting to build power, 80% is way too much to be lifting. You are building strength by doing this, which you do need as a base for power. Power is thought to be built optimally by doing sets with 30% max but doing them fast (e.g. jumping squats). Plyometrics will also help, although i assume that you already do that kind of thing in your sport.

On the hamstring note, (and this is hard to explain so bear with me), eccentric exercises would be beneficial. In normal gait, the most strain on the hamstrings is just before heelstrike when the hamstrings must eccentrically contract to slow the limb down. (Eccentric contraction being one where the muscle lengthens under tension instead of shortening). In other words, the hamstrings have to clamp down the brakes in order to stop the momentum hyperextending your knee. As you can imagine, this also happens with kicking. Therefore, doing eccentric exercises is the best way to prepare for this kind of activity.

Specifically, a good (intense) eccentric exercise for the hamstrings is a roman chair type exercise. Kneeling on the ground, you hook your heels under something, then keeping your body in a straight line, try to move closer to the ground (i.e. so you fall flat on your face). It is quite a hard exercise and i wouldn't do more than ten in a row, especially starting off (one set) even if you feel ok then as eccentric exercises tend to make you very sore the next day or so. This is thought to be
because the muscle fibres are being forced to lengthen past their comfort zone whilst still contracting and this breaks off some parts of the fibre. The good thing about it after you have recovered is that this actually lengthens the muscle fibre(rather than increasing size) which helps to prevent injuries at extremes of joint range.