Healing A Hamstring Injury

If you play sports, or if you have spend a good portion of your life participating in athletic events, there is a fairly good chance you have dealt with a hamstring injury at one point or another, as the hamstring is one of the most commonly injured muscles among athletes - but even if you do not play sports any longer (in fact, even if you have never played sports!), you can still end up with a hamstring injury. A hamstring injury can cause you a great deal of discomfort, and it can be one heck of a nuisance - and you may actually be surprised to realize what you should do in order to heal a hamstring injury if you have one.

The most surprising thing of all to most people, when they end up with a hamstring strain, is the fact that they should not stretch it; because of the tightness they will always feel in their hamstring, it will feel as though stretching is the best, most natural way to fix the problem, but because the muscles are trying to heal themselves, this will actually make things worse.

A couple things that you will be able to do, however, to help along the healing process are firstly, stay off your feet as much as possible, and secondly, alternate heat and ice on the strained muscle; when you stay off your feet, you will give your muscles a chance to rest and heal themselves, and when you circulate heat and cold, you will keep the blood flowing while also dulling the pain.

And the trickiest thing about hamstring injuries is the fact that they will often start to feel better, only to get worse when you overexert yourself. If you have hurt your hamstring in some way, make sure you wait well beyond the point when it feels better before you try to use it to its fullest, lest you end up back at square one all over again.