How can we reduce the incidents of hamstring injuries in sports?
Good question! Even though many people think that they have the recipe, looking at the evidence is not easy. In the last decade we’ve seen an explosion of eccentric exercise. This was used for prevent muscle injuries and tendinopathies, but recently a systematic review by prestigious Cochrane database conducted by Goldman and Jones shows that there is no evidence to support that the notion that hams injuries are prevented through eccentric training and that popular hamstring strengthening protocols have contradictory findings with one small study showing benefits and decreasing injuries and 2 bigger studies showing the opposite. This interesting finding was compromised by poor methodology and the use of only one exercise, the Nordic Hamstring exercise, that works the knee flexors eccentrically but with a fixed hip. But, didn’t we say above that the hip extension moment arm was double than the moment arm at the knee? This could be a reason but undoubtedly better studies are needed. More
