There are various measures to take or to follow to avoid a hamstring injury as a sportsman or sportswoman. These measures help prevent or minimize the chances of hamstring injuries. They are:
Performing a warm-up exercise: Before performing any activity on the field, it is expedient for sports participants always to do a warm-up of about fifteen to twenty minutes. This warm-up can include stretching the legs to help prepare the muscles for sporting activities.
Performing Cool-down: After field activities, the muscles are stretched out. At this instant, a cool-down exercise may be required to help the muscles relax and ease the accumulated stress after sports activity.
Performing Hamstring Flexibility Exercises: In this activity, working on the flexibility of the muscles includes some active stretches like standing hamstring stretch, seated hamstring stretch, Lying hamstring stretch, wall sit hamstring stretch, and Leg swing hamstring stretch. These flexibility exercises are good and serve as excellent preventive measures for sustaining hamstring injuries.
Making Use of Proper Footwear: Shoes with enough support and foam padding are always recommended to make use of when carrying out sporting activities. The use of proper footwear is to prevent the foot from having direct contact with the ground as this could cause unnecessary tension on the muscles and expose it to hamstring injuries.
Special Training (Injury-based): With the help of special injury training, quite a good number of ways to prevent hamstring injuries will be handled. The training will be tailored to performing sport movement exercises and this will go a long way to resist the injury problem.
Regular Resting Time: Fatigue is one of the major causes of hamstring injuries in the world of sports today. Whenever a player is exposed to too much playing time, the player will get to a level where he or she will become too tired and as the demand to do more keeps beckoning, fatigue creeps in and there are high tendencies to suffer from hamstring injuries.
Performing Neurophysiological Training: Neurophysiological training involves improving communication between the nervous system and muscles of the body for the maximum benefit of enhanced movement and stability. As this training is deployed, the strength, power, endurance, flexibility, posture, timing, and coordination of the muscles are greatly increased. With these benefits, proneness to hamstring injuries is greatly conquered.
Gradual Increase in Exercise Activities: It’s expected to always attempt to intensify the frequency at which a particular exercise is being carried out. A practical way to do this is to increase the activity at a gradual rate. For example, when jogging, a player can increase how the rate at which the jogging routine is being cone but on a gradual approach to avoid too much stress on the muscles.
Approach to Carrying out the Hamstring Preventive Measures
Pre-Season Period: Before any league season kicks off, the core focus of every player is to regularly perform exercise that builds strength, flexibility, and endurance.
Pro-Season Period: When the season is on, players should focus more on maintaining strength and flexibility. This is done with reduced intensity, to shield the muscles from being exposed to hamstring injuries.
