Not your usual hamstring strain...

Hi,
My name is Steve. I am an athlete in the sport of WUSHU.

This is a demonstration sport involving martial arts techniques, and acrobatics, performed over a 1min 30second routine.
It is extremely dynamic and strenuous in nature, and requires extreme levels of fitness, strength and most importantly, FLEXIBILITY.

This is a link to myself performing at a wushu competition in 2007, so you can see what i am talking about... (may have to copy and paste the link to your web address bar)

YouTube - Steve Coleman Chang Quan 2007 UK Nationals


Here's my problem...

Since i've been back home from the world championships in china in november 2007, i have massively lost all flexibility. Before i left, my flexibility in my legs and hips was amazing. I was stretching over front splits (a natural progression from front splits on the floor), full box splits, standing side splits, and had excellent active range.

This was achieved through many months of careful stretching, and PNF stretching.
(and of course thorough warm ups and cool downs were always essential)

When i returned home i jumped straight into heavy squat training in an effort to build jumping power. (I was squatting 3 sets of 5 reps at 80% my max lift ability, 3 times a week for 5 weeks)

Over xmas i spent 2 weeks in Florida on holiday with no stretching at all, and tons of walking around.

And the result now is that i have very very painful hamstrings when i try and stretch higher than eye level. I can no longer split (front L and R and box).
I cannot kick high, and now struggle to cartwheel.
At chest level i can comfortably hold a forward stretch. Any higher and i feel sharp pains in my lower and upper hams. But the belly seems to be fine. (It is not the usual stretching pain that i am VERY familiar with, as i cannot relax at all)

I am having deep tissue massage once a week (it was twice a week for 6 weeks leading up to the world championships last year), and very gently trying improve the stretch, but it seems like it's going nowhere.
I have been told that i may well have torn my muscles near the tendons at the bottom and tops of my hamstrings.
But I can walk fine, run jump and sprint fine. It's just my forward range of motion (leg swing fwd) is seriously impaired. And as you can see from my video, i need to kick high and land in splits!

The pain does not feel anything like a usual stretching pain. It's very sharp and even when i try and relax, i cannot hold the stretch point for very long at all.

Is this a typical strain?
If so, do you have any advice that might help?

Thank you for your help.
Steve

Hello,

One thing I can say for sure going all out with 80% intensity during strength training sessions, 3x/week is likely to be the source of the subsequent problems that you have now incurred. There is no way that muscles recover from that intensity:
Intense exercise (weightlifting and aerobic training) causes small, micro injuries to joints, muscles and blood vessels. In response to this, the body releases “stress chemicals” to enhance the healing process.

Source: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 32:317-331,2001.

The fact is, the harder you exercise, the more recovery time you need between sessions. The more often you train, the better your nutrition must be. If you really want to see results from exercise, take the time to plan your training program. A haphazard approach to diet and exercise only leads to stagnation in results and overtraining.

Additionally, there is no reason why you can't regain your flexibility without an intelligent training program.

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

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.