Charlie- When Ben injured a hamstring or quad, how did he get his flexibility back and did he get it back like before the injury?
Also, what type of massage works best for sprinters?
Ben never had a quad injury and only 2 major hamstring injuries in 11 years- mostly related to a horrendous travel schedule dictated by sponsorship commitments. Cross friction and ART treatments as well as accupuncture were key to recovery as well as a carefu re-introduction of speed work.
Also, a pet peeve of mine is the concept of “strengthening the injured muscle” with modalities like cybex etc. Sometimes these things are used after a layoff of only a few days! How’d the athlete get weak in this time??? Can’t he take the weekend off training occasionally without losses? these alledged strengthening modalities always cause problems and should be avoided- something I learned the hard way 20 years ago. Apparently people still are slow learners today.
I once was running at a cold climate on a beach and pulled my hamstring. I even heard the thing snap. The next day it was black and blue a few inches below. I Remembed vaguely a article that Charlie had wrote about getting an athlete back to within 95% speed after only 1 month. I also remembered that there are a lot of athletes around that never seem to get over them. So, i followed what i thought i remembered was Charlies advice.
I iced the injury within 10min. And iced it for 48hrs, around 3 times per day. After 48hrs, ice generally becomes usless. I have a little “tens” machine which i put on Recovery mode and used that every day. And every day, from the day after injury, i ran strides as fast as i could manage. Since i could not even walk properally, the strides for the first week were so slow, i was hardly going jogging pace. I knew it must have been working, because each and every day, i was getting faster and faster. After a week, i could get to jogging pace with only a small limp, and a bit faster than that with a limp. Now the first week really hurt. Limping doing darn slow strides and the pain from the hamstring was increadable. I knew though, the pain would be less than if i did nothing and let it heal by itself and try to resume running that way. I massaged then iced after the sessions. Then just massaged after the 48hrs. Self massage that was. I continued this pretty much for the remander of the month. Then i went to a physio to check how much scare tissues was still around. She found bugger all but there was still some. On the 3rd visit to her after 2weeks, she said there was no scare tissue left. How awsome was that, just over 1 mnth, and no scare tissue and back to running near full speed. I have also done the same thing to my calf muscle, remembering what worked well with the hamstring, i applied the same, but this time, i knew a awsome actpuncture guy and we got it 95% within 2wks. Full speed around 2 1/2 wks.
I have had no recurring problem with either, and have learned when not to run (I hope) so i dont get those type of problems again.