Not all hamstring strains are the same injury
The sprinting type happens at speed — chasing a ball, running down the wing, accelerating out of a turn. The pain is usually in the middle of the muscle belly, it announces itself sharply, and it is the most common version in rugby league, football, touch and athletics. It also tends to be the faster of the two to come back from.
The stretching type happens in a lengthened position — a high kick, a slide tackle, a dancer’s or a martial artist’s split, a sudden lunge for the ball. The pain sits higher, close to the sit bone, and it consistently takes longer. In the Swedish trial, stretching-type injuries took almost twice as long to return as sprinting-type ones in both treatment arms.
High hamstring tendinopathy is the slow-burn version: a deep ache at the sit bone that hurts most when sitting on a hard chair, driving or running uphill, with no single moment of injury. It is a tendon problem, it behaves like one, and it is treated with the loading principles in our heavy slow resistance guide rather than with rest and stretching.
And the impostor: pain referred from the lumbar spine or the gluteal region into the back of the thigh, which is routinely mistaken for a hamstring. Every assessment includes the back — see our back pain and sciatica page.
How the rehab is built changes the timeline
Askling and colleagues randomised 75 Swedish elite footballers with MRI-confirmed acute hamstring injuries to one of two rehabilitation protocols. One emphasised lengthening exercises — loading the hamstring in the long position it fails in. The other used conventional exercises. Time to full team training and match availability was 28 days on average for the lengthening protocol against 51 days for the conventional one, and the advantage held for both injury types. Only one reinjury was recorded across the whole study in the twelve months after return, and it was in the conventional group.
That is one trial in elite footballers, and a weekend player is not a professional. But the mechanism is the point: a hamstring that has only been trained in a shortened, comfortable range has not been prepared for the position in which it tore.
On the scale of the problem, the UEFA Elite Club Injury Study followed 36 clubs across twelve countries for thirteen seasons and recorded 1,614 hamstring injuries. In any given season, 22% of players sustained at least one. Match injury rates were more than nine times training rates — and while match rates stayed stable across the thirteen years, training-related hamstring injuries rose by about 4% a year, which says something uncomfortable about how training loads have changed.
The Nordic hamstring exercise, and why teams skip it
A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled 15 studies and 8,459 athletes across multiple sports, both sexes and a range of age groups. Programs that included the Nordic hamstring exercise cut hamstring injury risk to about half that of the control groups — an injury risk ratio of 0.49, or a reduction of up to 51%. The effect survived when the analysis was restricted to randomised trials, and when studies at high risk of bias were removed.
Very few local clubs do it consistently, for the obvious reason: it is hard and it makes players sore for a few days when they start. The fix is dosing — starting low, building slowly, and placing it where the soreness will not wreck a game. It is one of the highest-value twenty minutes a week in amateur sport.
How we assess a hamstring in Daisy Hill
We establish the mechanism first — sprinting or stretching — because that alone shapes the timeline. Then we map where the tenderness sits and how close to the sit bone it runs, test strength at different knee and hip angles including the long position, check the active straight leg raise, and screen the back and glutes. We ask about every previous hamstring injury, because a prior strain is the strongest predictor of the next one.
Return-to-sport decisions are where measurement earns its keep. Our VALD force-plate and dynamometry testing gives side-to-side strength symmetry, which beats asking whether the leg feels alright in the warm-up. Imaging is not routine; MRI helps when a high-grade or tendon-attachment injury is suspected.
Hamstring injury at a glance
Sprinting-type strains come back faster than stretching-type strains at the sit bone · A lengthening-based rehab protocol returned elite players in 28 days versus 51 for conventional exercises · The Nordic hamstring exercise roughly halves hamstring injury risk across sports · Previous hamstring injury is the strongest predictor of the next one, so rehab is not finished when the pain stops · See a doctor promptly for a hamstring injury with numbness, a visible gap in the muscle, severe bruising down the leg, or an inability to bear weight.
What hamstring rehab involves here
Early work is gentle loading and range, not rest — the tissue needs a stimulus to remodel. From there the program moves into lengthened-position strength (Nordics, sliders, Romanian deadlifts and extender-style work), then into running mechanics, acceleration and high-speed exposure, which is the part most people never actually complete. All of it runs in our gym-based rehab space, because a hamstring cannot be rehabilitated on a plinth.
The last phase matters most. Returning to a game without having sprinted at full speed in training is how the 22% becomes a recurring number. We set exit criteria rather than a date, and we plan the first two weeks back — minutes, position, and how much running comes before the next game. If the injury happened at work or in a car accident, WorkCover and CTP pathways are handled here too.
Paying for hamstring rehab in Logan
Private patients can claim on the spot through HICAPS — see our physiotherapy fees page. Recurrent hamstring problems are sometimes managed under a GP chronic condition management plan, where Medicare rebates item 10960 at $63.40 from 1 July 2026, for up to five allied health visits a calendar year pooled across professions — see our Medicare physiotherapy page. DVA card holders are billed directly for accepted conditions and NDIS participants on plan-managed or self-managed plans can use their funding with us.
Book a hamstring assessment in Daisy Hill
Daisy Hill Physio is at Unit 4, 11–13 Allamanda Drive, Daisy Hill QLD 4127 — in Logan City, Queensland, Australia (not Logan, Utah) — and treats footballers, league and touch players, sprinters and weekend athletes from Springwood, Shailer Park, Slacks Creek, Underwood, Rochedale South, Cornubia and Loganholme. Book online or call 07 3209 2000 and tell reception it is a hamstring, and when it happened. Physiotherapist Arvin Benzon leads much of our strength and return-to-sport work; meet the whole team on our team page or read how to choose a physio in Logan.
Reviewed by Arvin Benzon, Physiotherapist, Daisy Hill Physio. Content current at 23 September 2026. This page is general information, not a diagnosis — see a physiotherapist or GP for advice about your own situation.
Sources: Askling CM, Tengvar M, Thorstensson A. Acute hamstring injuries in Swedish elite football: a prospective randomised controlled clinical trial comparing two rehabilitation protocols. Br J Sports Med 2013;47:953–959 · van Dyk N, Behan FP, Whiteley R. Including the Nordic hamstring exercise in injury prevention programmes halves the rate of hamstring injuries: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 8459 athletes. Br J Sports Med 2019;53:1362–1370 · Ekstrand J, Waldén M, Hägglund M. Hamstring injuries have increased by 4% annually in men’s professional football, since 2001: a 13-year longitudinal analysis of the UEFA Elite Club injury study. Br J Sports Med 2016;50:731–737. Accessed 23 September 2026.
Inner-thigh or groin pain instead? See groin pain in athletes.
