Hamstring strain or tears can cause thickening and adhesions at the site of injury. Creating “sticky” spots with poor skin glide and mobility. Self mobilization using a lacrosse ball is one way to help break these adhesions and improve mobility of the hamstring. Once the tissue mobility is restored often much easier to stretch and strengthen the muscles.

This technique can be done for 5-10 minutes every other day. Once the tissue mobility improves and you are not as tight or sore can do the technique more frequently.

Tweetables:

Muscle Mobilization Techniques for the Hamstring [Click To Tweet]

How to Recover Quickly from a Hamstring Strain [Click To Tweet]

Hamstring Strains in Athletes: Diagnosis and Treatment [Click To Tweet]

Transcript:

Hey guys, this is Manu Kalia, physical therapist and herbalist. So, today’s video, I’m going to show you another technique to help mobilize hamstrings specifically following hamstring strains or pulls, those injuries which become chronic due to adhesions and thickening that forms around microtears. So I’ve shown a couple of other videos on how to do mobilization of that tissue, how to break down that scar tissue using your hands and your elbows, which are soft tissue mobilization techniques. So this is more of a self-mobilization where you can use a ball, a lacrosse ball, to mobilize that tissue yourself.

So, edge of a chair or a table will work just fine, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this and we’re going to find…so let’s hit the strains along the…remember, your hamstrings are the muscle in the back of your thighs, so if the strain is along the muscle belly somewhere, we’re going to search and find the tender spot and put a little pressure on that, and then do some stretching of the hamstring tissue.

So let’s say we find that spot to be right about the area at the midpoint, and so all she’s going to do is she’s going to have her hands here on the side so she can maneuver herself back and forth and see where she’s at. So yeah, move yourself up and down, and so she can find that spot. Let’s say that’s the spot she finds, so now she can bear some weight on that and even control how much weight you bring down onto that tissue by your arms. So once you put some pressure—now, you can move your leg around back and forth, too, to figure out where the spot is, and it’s a matter of extending your leg, your knee, back and forth because that stretches that hamstring as well as maintains the pressure on it so it really helps mobilize that tissue.

And you might have to roll on it a little further or move back depending on where the spot is or a couple of spots are, and you can control the amount of pressure you’re applying on it. So if she leans her body forward a bit more and places more of the weight onto that ball, so that might apply more pressure now, and then she can work at sliding back and forth. And she could technically even apply more pressure with your hand on it, but if you’re doing a soft mobilization technique, so you can work at stretching that tissue. And now you wiggle side to side, go back and forth, really work it, moving in various directions to get those adhesions and the knotted-up tissue, and this will be a really good way to not only help improve that mobility but also to free up multiple layers of that tissue that are bound up. So once that tissue starts to move better, it can also help improve the tissue health, so better flexibility, and then you can start working on the strengthening part if you have less pain and less restriction on that tissue.

So your goal is here to work on getting rid of the sticky spots. I would spend about five, 10 minutes, five minutes initially first couple of times to search and work on that tissue. You could even maintain, sustain pressure on that spot for a minute or two, like doing self-acupressure on that spot to free up the knotted tissue. If you do too much it can get sore, so I would do it every other day initially or every two days till you get more comfortable with it.  Once the mobility improves and you are not as sore, and then you can do it more frequently.

So I hope that helps, gives you another tool to help at self-mobilizing. Make sure you subscribe to the channel and make sure you check out our site. We have tons or resources on the site, and our program, Build Better Knees, is on our site too. Be sure to check it out and make sure you will leave a comment. Thanks.