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- Hamstrings muscle dynamics during the Nordic…
Hamstrings muscle dynamics during the Nordic hamstring exercise and high-speed running
Key Points
- High speed running and the Nordic hamstring exercise appear to expose the Biceps Femoris Long Head to different dynamics.
BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE
Hamstring injuries represent almost a quarter of all injuries within men’s professional football (1). It is therefore important to understand the factors that may influence risk of injury, and strategies to address them.
The Nordic Hamstring Exercise (NHE) is one exercise that is commonly utilized as part of a hamstring injury prevention plan due to ease of performance with no specific equipment needed. The exercise is well supported by an extensive research base which suggests that it is able to elicit desirable changes in the Biceps Femoris Long Head (BFLH) muscle such as increased fascicle length and eccentric strength (2).
Inclusion of high-speed running has also been proposed as an important component of hamstring injury prevention, as it ensures that the athlete is exposed to the demands they will face in a competitive setting. This strategy is favored by some practitioners who see it as a more specific training task than the NHE (3), but the incorporation of high-speed running can be problematic with the perception of increased injury risk.
For these reasons, this article looked to understand the demands and compare the muscle dynamics when performing the NHE and when running across a range of different speeds in the same cohort of subjects.
What this research demonstrates is that the NHE is an important part of the puzzle as it provides much greater muscle-tendon unit impulse and greater negative muscle-tendon unit work.
METHODS
- The study utilized 14 subjects (eight male & six female) who had a sporting background and were injury-free at the time of participation in the study.