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Answers

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  Dr Allison Van Ommen (Osteopath)
  Health Professional

  Alli grew up in Hobart, Tasmania before completing a 5 year Osteopathic degree at RMIT. After graduating Alli moved to Greece to play in the ... View profile

  Pilates works at strengthening and supporting the spine enhancing spinal and pelvic stability.  Hamstring issue's are usually problematic due to imbalances in the pelvis causing uneven weight distribution in the legs whilst walking and running.  Strengthening your spinal and pelvic stability will strengthen neuromuscular pathways and correct uneven weight distribution.  
  
  As an Osteopath and elite athlete myself I would highly recommend pilates not only to help your hamstring issue but also to prevent other unnecessary injuries. Reply to this post  |  Report
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  Vitali Kanevsky (Physiotherapist)
  Health Professional

  Modern, comfortable, clean and well equipped practice providing high standards of professional care, dedicated to returning you to pain-free activity. Physiotherapists are the health professionals ... View profile

  From the limited details we get in these questions, the short answer is that pilates although useful for other conditions would not be my first treatment choice for recurrent hamstring strains.
  
  Research says that hamstring strains account for about 1 in 7 soccer injuries. Depending on the severity of the injury, recovery from a hamstring straincan take from a few days to several months. The re-injury rate is also high with about 25% of players suffering a recurrent injury. The muscles are often injured whilst running or sprinting, during the late swing phase of the stride. During that period, the hamstring muscles generate force to slow hip flexion and knee extension while they are being stretched. That is, are undergoing an eccentric contraction. A strain is just small tears within the muscle where scar tissue builds up. This scar tissue is not as elastic or strong as the muscle tissue.
  
  Initially, we would need to have a look whether there is an intrinsic involvement of the low back or mid back. There may be some neural tension which contributes to the recurrent nature of your condition. Other than that you need appropriate rest from aggravating activities and stretches/hands-on therapy to lengthen the muscle and help break up the scar tissue. The next part is the most important - strengthening the muscle to cope with your activities. This is the point you may also need to focus on appropriate core stabilisation, initially very basic exericises but building up to perhaps pilates (but this needs to be sport specific).
  
  A recent very large controlled study of 50 teams from the Danish top five divisions focussed on preventing hamstring strains. (Petersen etal. Preventive effect of eccentric training on acute hamstring injuries in men’s soccer. A cluster-randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Sports Medicine 2011). The hamstring injury rate for the training group was 3.8, compared to 13.1 for the control group. That is a 71% decrease in the rate of injury using a simple program of Nordic hamstring training over 10 weeks (a form of eccentric hamstring training). For new injuries, eccentric training reduced the injury rate by more than 60%. For recurrent injuries, the rate was lowered by about 85%!
  
  Your physiotherapist would go through all the above steps to return you to injury free soccer. Happy to see you or answer your question in more detail. Reply to this post  |  Report
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