Hello,
Apologies if this is in the wrong section.
I have received a few separate private messages on this form for people looking for some feedback and my experience with high hamstring tendinopathy and thought it may make a good forum post for those to reference as I have spent countless hours researching this topic with fairly limited results, especially from those who have experienced it themselves in the long term and achieved a resolution.
As an aside, I’m by no means a medical professional and therefore may have incorrect assumptions or understanding of some of the items discussed here. I’m simply looking to share my experience in the hopes it would help others and would defer to the judgement of the Barbell Medicine professionals.
For some background, I have been dealing with High Hamstring Tendinopathy for 8 years now (since 2013) and spent countless hours between research, consults, multiple physiotherapists, acupuncture, graston, massage, foam rolling, x-rays, ultrasounds, chiropractic, stretching etc. to try and resolve the issue. I have been following Barbell Medicine programming and content for around 4 years now and have found myself defaulting to their content and these forms for a proper referenced perspective on many of the outlandish claims made by the health and fitness community.
In 2013 (not long after I started lifting weights outside of a home “P90x” environment) I started having very intense sharp pain at the top of my left hamstring right under the glute when performing squats and deadlifts. This was at weights that were heavy to me at the time but extremely light overall as I was very untrained overall. This pain was so intense that I would have to immediately stop my repetition and be unable to perform anymore. Initially, I thought this was just a temporary injury and spent a few months spinning my wheels having the pain occur, taking some “rest” from squatting and deadlifting and then trying to squat and deadlift again and having it reoccur.ok, can
Finally after months of this, I just gave up and stopped squatting and deadlifting all together while training other movements and machines only.
In 2014 I decided I wanted to squat and deadlift again and really started to attack this hard and over the next 3 years I spent countless hours researching, listening to podcasts, going to specialists and trying nearly every intervention option available. I would frequently think i was “better” and then it would reoccur only to crush my optimism and continue my search for the “fix”. At some point during this timeframe the same pain started to happen in the right hamstring as well so I was experiencing the same thing in both legs.
In 2017 the chiropractor I was seeing was unable to “fix” me with chiropractic, graston or dry needling and referred me to a sports specific chiropractor that was based out of a powerlifting gym. He told me that since I injured myself so many times, my hamstring fibers that were supposed to run together in neat lines were all jumbled up and would represent “pulled pork” and based on his title alone, I trusted him. Clearly this was a terrible way to explain an injury to a patient but he had the right approach in trying to fix me through movement rather than any fancy pseudoscience. I worked with him on gradually increasing load and volume of several exercises like nordic hamstring curls. At the beginning, as soon as I would start to descend I would collapse but as time went on, I got better and better and while the pain didn’t disappear entirely, it only became present at higher intensities (pain at 225lb deadlift instead of 135lb for example).
Alas, after 5 years of intense ups and downs I was sure I was finally “cured” and could go ahead and train injury free, until the pain came back once I got stronger and began lifting heavier weights.
The defeat once this pain returned was crushing and I wasn’t sure what to do. I began heavily researching into this yet again as well as incorporating pain science which led to me to Barbell Medicine and the numerous references and resources they provide. I started learning how much BS was peddled in the health and fitness industry and how many incorrect beliefs I held about my injury, pain, the effectiveness of many injury interventions and how truly important the mental aspect of an injury is. I also noticed a trend of long term improvement in pain and injury through movement which is what I had personally experienced when working with the chiropractor in 2017.
I did a consult in 2019 with Michael Ray in which he took a similar approach as the chiropractor in 2017, working through how I had mentally framed my injury, providing positive and inspiring feedback about recovery and how to recover through movement.
Today, I can say that I have not experienced the level of pain I used to in years and that I very rarely experience any pain at all, even on top sets of deadlifts and squats. I have learned that the mental aspect and accepting that pain comes and goes with life’s ups and downs was the most important part of recovery for me. I would go weeks without feeling pain and then it would reoccur and instead of catastrophizing and thinking I was injured yet again and needed rehab, I would note I had a lot of stress on my plate at that time or during that week and just assumed it would go away and get better in a day or two.
In terms of training, I would just train normally and if I had a day where the pain would start to get worse, I would just back off, taking the pain as part of my RPE consideration and some days that meant only doing the bar for deadlifts on that day, not stressing about it whatsoever anymore and just assume it would be better or gone tomorrow.
To be honest, I can say I have not even thought about hamstring tendinopathy in 6+ months.
I have also noted how this approach has helped me in so many other “injuries” that would have stressed me out and put me out of training in the past and unless there is a clearly obvious injury that required immediate medical care, I just assume I will feel better in a few days time and in general, I do.
If anyone has any questions, I certainly welcome it and hope this can help out someone else going through this same sort of thing as going through this for 8 years had taught me quite a bit and I had nearly given up on training entirely dozens of times.
Thanks,
Adam