Integrating Research Into Practice: Hamstring Injuries

July 2021 Member Article:
Research Review - Hamstring Injuries

In PT school, we spend a lot of time (too much time?) reading research without understanding how we can put it to use in clinical practice with real life people.

Instead, we break down the paper section by section and discuss why the population studied isn’t good enough, how the methods used have limitations which do not allow us to extrapolate the results to other populations, and what other statistical analyses should have been performed.

While being able to understand how to critically analyze research in those ways to understand the limitations of it are important and need to be appreciated, that will not be our approach with the research/articles we share and discuss with you. We will not be deeming the research articles we talk about useful or not based upon the level of evidence, the methods used, and how the study was designed (if a study is that poorly designed we most likely won’t even talk about it).

Instead of nitpicking research, we will focus on key takeaways from articles (good or bad) and how they can impact our clinical decision making because ultimately everything we learn should help the people we work with in some way.

In the rest of this article, we review research on the action of the hamstrings during sprinting, how this effects the rehab process, and what the rehab X’s and O’s might look like.

To Read More: Click and Learn About Our Membership Options