I finally got my mom to get a referall from my doctor to get physical therapy. Im gonna be going 3 times a week for 6 weeks.
The therapy might do more harm than good. Most therapy is just strength training of some sort. Many years ago Joe Horrigan pointed out that strengthening a muscle only makes sense if you’re dealing with normal tissue. However, if the tissue is injured it is not going to respond to the training in a normal manner. Loading an injured muscle riddled with scar tissue is going to make matters worse, not better. Some PTs are trained in various forms of massage, so ask your therapist if he/she can do some soft tissue work on you. If not, forget it.
I think dazs is right. Find a friend (preferably a cute girl 
) and check out a book on basic massage and go from there.
Another approach would be to buy a foam roller and a small rubber ball and use those for self-myofascial release. These are cheap and easy to use. There have been a ton of posts on this topic so do a search.
http://www.bodylogic.com/index.htm
In addition, you really need to learn more about speed training. The workout you described in your first post pretty much answers the question of how you got injured in the first place. Start doing searches and reading through the archives. Getting a copy of the new ebook will give you a great starting point.
I went to the physical therapy today and what they did was massage it for a little while (and yeh it hurt) then they did this ultra-sound machine, then they did this like electric thing that like makes ur muscle feel all wierd and stuff. when we were done with all that we just stretched it out alot.
and Flash what do u mean by the way i was speed training? what was wrong with it? It was just before football and thats the kind of speed training we do so how could it be bad?
DBjohn,
I don’t even know how to begin to answer your question because there is so much that needs to be addressed, most notably your blind faith in the effectiveness of your football coach’s speed training. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, most football coaches’ understanding of speed training is measured in negative units. If that sounds insulting, it’s because it is. And I’m not just talking about high school coaches. Charlie spends much of his time repairing the damage done by NFL coahces.
Please take the time to do a search of the archives. The basics of speed training have been covered in several extensive posts. One quick pointer that I will give you is to dramatically increase you rest intervals between runs. As a good starting point, use about 1.5 to 2 minutes rest for every 10m in the sprint. For example, your 50m sprints should have about 8 min between them, not 3. Also, keep your total speed volume below 500m per workout, that includes any warm-up accelerations you may do at the beginning. In fact, 500m is pretty high and closer to what a high level sprinter would do.
Here’s a sample workout to get the point accross:
Warm-up accelerations: 4x30m with about 3 min recovery, each one a little faster than the one before it (this 120m total counts toward the speed volume of the workout)
5 min rest
10x10m with 1-1.5 min recovery
5-10min rest
4x20m with 4 min recovery
5-10min rest
2x30m with 5 min recovery
That’s 360m total volume, using short distances that are more appropriate for football.
ok i see what ur saying. but do you that it was just the rest intervals or the whole workout? and also how does the physical therapy sound? are they doing what needs to be done?
I’ll let someone else with more experience comment on the therapy, but it seems like they’re heading in roughly the right direction.
The main problem I see in the workout is the rest intervals. I think shorter sprints would be more effective for football, but 2x25 and 4x50 is pretty conservative. However, if you subject the hamstrings to high intensity when they’re fatigued (either acutely or chronically) the risk of injury is pretty high, as you have discovered the hard way. I think another contributing factor was your previous injury, which was not properly resolved. This is why everyone is so adamant about getting the right therapy.
The damage I see with NFL players is seldom a result of the team coaches- it is often a result of outside training with Gurus. The injuries in a team setting are much more likely to be contact related (forced into an unnatural position). In fact, I just returned from an NFL team this week and their strength and conditionning was second to none. That’s not to imply that the training available from many top NFL teams is typical at the lower levels.
As for injury recovery, it is imperative that you get hands-on good manual therapy to break up the scar tissue. There is NO SUBSTITUTE. Without it, you will continue to have problems.
Many therapies want to “strengthen the muscle” instead of rubbing it out. What does that mean anyway? If you pulled 2 days ago, how did you magically become weak? Does this mean we can’t take the weekend off training for fear of losing strength also?
Sheisskopts, whats that mean?? 
Never heard of that, must be bad!!
I stand corrected on NFL coaches, but I’m still not impressed by most high school coaches. Although there are always exceptions, luckily.
ok so im done going to physical therapy because i just dont see the need when my mom caqn give me the same kind of massage. (she would watch the therapist do it) She does it 1-2 times per day, and i can almost fully sprint again, im already back the being the fastest on my team without being able to fully sprint. I just ice it after practice and then at night my mom massages ans stretches it some more. Im gonna start using a heating pad after she massages it just to see if it will help at all.
Use the heat before the massage
Ice after, for a max of 20 mins
Oh yeh - and make sure you thank your Mum too and never forget Mothers Day!!!