Hamstring strain

What it is

Three muscles run down the back of the thigh from the sitting bone at the base of the pelvis to below the knee. They extend the hip and they slow the lower leg down as it swings forward. A strain is a tear in those fibres, most often where the muscle blends into its tendon. Volleyball ones sit either in the belly of the outer hamstring or high up near the sitting bone, and the high ones are slower to settle.

How volleyball causes it

Volleyball is not a sprinting sport, so the classic top-speed hamstring tear is less common here and two other patterns dominate. The first is the stretch type: a deep lunge, a sprawl, or a pancake for a dig, where the hip folds deep while the knee is near straight, putting the hamstring at its longest exactly as it is asked to hold the body up. The second is braking: the plant step of the approach and the stop at the end of a chase are hard eccentric decelerations and the hamstring is the brake. Sand makes it worse because the plant foot keeps sliding, so the deceleration lasts longer and the muscle holds that long position longer than it planned to.

DefensePassingAttackingServing

What it feels like

• A sudden grab, pull or pop in the back of the thigh during a lunge, a chase, or a hard plant, and you usually stop on the spot
• Tender when you press somewhere along the back of the thigh, and you can often put one finger on the exact spot
• Straightening the knee with the hip bent up reproduces it, so reaching for your toes or a straight-leg stretch bites
• Bruising appearing down the back of the thigh or into the calf over the next two or three days
• Walking is possible, but lengthening your stride or going down stairs feels unsafe
• High strains near the sitting bone ache when you sit on a hard bench or drive for a while

Stop and get it seen if

• A loud pop with immediate inability to walk, fast swelling, and a large bruise high in the thigh. The tendon can pull completely off the sitting bone, and that has a time window for surgical repair, so it needs seeing quickly.
• You are a teenager and felt sharp pain right at the sitting bone during a lunge or a split. Growing bone can pull away at its growth plate instead of the muscle tearing.
• Numbness, pins and needles, or shooting pain down into the calf or foot. That is nerve involvement, and back-referred pain frequently masquerades as a hamstring that will not get better.
• Back-of-thigh pain with no clear moment of injury, worse at night, or alongside fever or unexplained weight loss
• The leg gives way underneath you when you put weight on it

What recovery usually looks like

Stages, not a schedule. Everyone moves through these at their own pace, and the ranges are wide because real recoveries are.

1. 1. Protecting the tear

   3 days to 2 weeks

   Let the torn tissue build early scaffolding while movement and blood flow continue in a pain-free zone.

   • Walking at normal pace without shortening the stride
   • The sharp grab has become a defined, dull ache
   • Bruising, if there was any, has stopped spreading
   • You can contract the muscle gently without the sharp catch

2. 2. Strength through the long range

   2 to 6 weeks

   Restore force production with the muscle lengthened, which is where hamstrings fail and where they re-fail.

   • Knee straightens with the hip flexed to nearly the same range as the other side
   • Loading the muscle at length no longer reproduces the original pain
   • Jogging and gentle strides feel unremarkable
   • The tender spot is no longer distinct when you press it

3. 3. Speed, lunging and volleyball chaos

Ready to play again when

• Full-speed sprint and hard stop with no hesitation, and nothing the next morning
• Strength at long muscle lengths is symmetrical, not just strength tested in a short position
• You can lunge deep enough to dig a low ball on either side and get straight back to ready
• Two consecutive full practices with digging and chasing, with no tightening at the end of either
• Bending forward with straight legs reaches the same point on both sides without a pull

Keeping it from coming back

This is ordinary training, so unlike the rest of this page it does tell you what to do.

• Nordic hamstring curls, lowering as slowly as you can control. This has the strongest evidence in sport for cutting hamstring injuries, and it trains the exact eccentric brake the approach plant uses.
• Single-leg Romanian deadlifts, which load the hamstring long while one leg does the balancing, which is what the plant leg actually has to do.
• Sliding or stability-ball leg curls, to cover the knee-bending half of the hamstring's job that Nordics under-train.
• Actually sprint in your training week: a handful of near-maximal runs. A hamstring that never sees high speed in training will meet it for the first time chasing a ball down the line.
• Rehearse the deep dig lunge and the sprawl in the warm-up, going gradually deeper across preseason, so the first deep lunge of the year is not in a live rally.
• Glute strength through hip thrusts and step-ups. Weak glutes push more hip extension onto the hamstring, which is common in players who live in a low defensive posture all season.