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Sore Hamstrings May Not Mean An End To Your Marathon Plans
Category: RICES and Running & Marathons
Jan 30, 2007
Sore hamstrings may not mean an end to your marathon plans
Moderate training sometimes can alleviate injuries.
By Brom Hoban
AMERICAN-STATESMAN CORRESPONDENT
In the final weeks before a marathon, runners can cross that fine line between optimal training and injury. As a friend recently said, "Marathon training seems to awaken all of the dormant injuries you've forgotten about."
Most of the time, your first thought is, "There goes the marathon." But often, it doesn't need to work out that way.
The New York Times recently reported that "the usual advice in treating injuries is to rest until the pain goes away. But a number of leading sports medicine specialists say that is outdated and counterproductive."
Runners should be overjoyed to hear that, and many of them suspected it intuitively anyway.
The article quotes Dr. William Roberts, a sports medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota, in a revealing statement. "We want to keep you moving. Injured tissue heals better if it's under some sort of stress," he said.
That's not to say you shouldn't address the problem, just that the old "rest, ice compression and elevation" may not be the best and only answer.
ED: Ice Right is only part of the solution to your running problems, and only some of the time. Please take the time to learn more about your injuries, and more importantly, how to prevent them.
Often, it's a question of a weak link that needs to be dealt with. During marathon training in particular, the hamstrings take a lot of abuse, due to the constant "eccentric" contractions that take place during the running gait.
Three weeks before the Houston Marathon, I noticed soreness in my left upper hamstring. I had a fairly strong commitment to run Houston, so I decided the best course was to aggressively massage it out. During a similar previous injury, I had discovered that rolling on a kid-sized soccer ball and zooming in on the painful area could work wonders.
Sure enough, by race day, the hamstring pain was mostly gone. It did get a bit sore by marathon's end, but by that time, I was hurting everywhere.
Other proactive measures for hamstrings include specific strengthening exercises. Writing in the January-February 2007 issue of Running & FitNews, John Cianca, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist from Houston, said that the hamstrings can become overused due to "underactive and weak pelvic stabilizers and hip extensors."
To counter this, Cianca prescribes a regimen that focuses on hip and trunk strengthening, using a full-length mirror to monitor your posture and maintain optimal balance. He recommends including single-leg stands and single-leg squats, as well as prone leg extensions for the hip and lower back stabilizers.
"Additionally, single-leg stands with opposite leg abduction (movement away from the body) are excellent for strengthening the pelvis. This exercise targets the gluteus medius, a stabilizing muscle that is notoriously weak in runners and leads to hamstring overuse," Cianca said.
Sports medicine doctors agree that if an injury is obviously severe, as in a broken bone or torn Achilles' tendon, see a medical professional and don't go out for a run.
Read the full article