ATG Strategies For Dealing With Hamstring Tendon Issues

So we had a few questions come in and I’m going to answer one of them here today.

A question about hamstring pain.

We've had questions about lower tendon hamstring pain like down close to the knee and also upper hamstring insertional issues.

I’ve experienced both and they're not fun and we want to get over them.

I recently made a video, “ATG Tendon Secrets” and that basically shares what I have learned through this journey exploring athletic truth with Ben Patrick and together with sort of years of experience and I have been prone to tendon injuries whether that is because I like to push volume and push numbers and have been too ego driven in my lifting or genetic factors or whatever, it doesn't really matter, what matters is that I’ve experienced a lot of this and I know the frustration that it can cause and I also know that the way that I’m able to train now, I’m able to handle more volume.

I’ve had less tendon issues. If I do have a tendon frustration then I can overcome it much more quickly.

I’m not really scared about them anymore in the way that I have been scared about tendon issues.

I’ve actually rejected whole training systems because I wasn't able to explore them because of the potential for tendon issues.

If you see some of the speed bench work and things I’m doing at the moment.

You see that I’m exploring this and it's feeling good.

So yes, it can be upper or lower.

If it's upper then we need to focus more so on hip dominant exercises and if it's to the lower hamstring then we want to focus more on knee dominant flexion work.

So I’m going to show you some of those exercises and basically, we've gone too far with tension when we start to get these hamstring issues.

So we've got these cables and I explain more about how I view tendons in the ATG Tendon Secrets video.

I’m not going to go into it a lot but if you've exposed the tendon to too much tension it's more the instantaneous tension that we're really worried about.

Low volume, low-intensity stuff is actually much more healing, it's not that you've done too much, it's that it was too intense.

So there was an instant that was too intense or there were too many of those really high tension instances.

The solution will be in blood and heat and circulation, especially for tendons.

Ice seems like the worst idea you could come up with especially for tendinopathy chronic tendon challenges, heat and circulation and then diet and health, collagen, these are factors that we should consider and they are explained inside the ATG Tendon Secrets.

The short-range work is really going to be the key the secret to get this back on track.

We want to use the short range and build tolerance in that position.

Basically, that allows us to regress the tension here.

Point number two, it's going to be lighter, slower, and shorter movements.

I’m going to show you examples of these but we also want to do some light long work.

It is a mistake when we're healing a muscle or overcoming an injury to only think of it from a strength perspective, we also need to look at in which positions it's strong.

As Louis Simmons said it does no good to get strong in the wrong movements.

For athletes, we need to be strong in the long position as well as the short position.

I’m going to explain it. I’m going to show you exactly what I’m talking about.

Heat. It really heals and that's going to be the key to getting us back on track and being able to progress.

Check out this “How to strengthen your tendons” video if you haven't yet and you want to really go deep into tendons but I’m going to specifically here about the hamstrings.

It wouldn't be a hamstring video if it didn't show Ben Patrick doing Nordics.

The reason why people may be having trouble with their tendons is because they're extremely excited about getting very very strong in the hamstrings and so they should be and here's an example.

BEN: “This is the greatest common denominator between the world's greatest horizontal athletes because this is the greatest point of force in horizontal speed and jumping but only that has been tested. We don't have studies on what the grades can do but even doing this is proven to reduce hamstring injury by as much as 50% and we have a route that anyone can get to this because it scales… horizontal athletes because this is the greatest point of force in horizontal speed and jumping…”

The point of force. We want to develop strength around that point of force and the speed that we get into and out of that position, that instantaneous force is going to play a huge role in whether we get injured or whether we build strength.

The instantaneous force in this lengthened position is what we need to develop and Ben has really brought light to something that I think a lot of strength coaches have realized over the years that the athletes who can do Nordics, who are strong in this movement tends to be very fast, they tend to be resilient in the lower body but we haven't really known how to get them there and what ATG has done, what Ben has been piecing together is how to get there and it has worked very well and we've made some good additions to that process over the last couple of months as well, which I’m going to talk to you about right now.

We're going to jump a little bit further ahead in that video

BEN: “eccentrics only at your level then we find a very smooth and fun ride to the elite…”

So there are all sorts of progressions within the Nordic itself.

To be able to develop it gradually and to work in the range that you're able to work through etc.

So being patient is definitely one of the keys here but once there is a tendon irritation then that approach may not be the solution.

BEN: “the athlete standard which diamond upper crest to the glutes is a strict Marty St. Louis MSL on the way up, which means abs come off the bench first by contracting the glutes thus putting all the tension on the hamstrings… continue to pull followed by three Jonathan Edwards on the way down. Jonathan did these for 20 years once a week, is the greatest speed transformation ever winning a gold medal at age 34 with gray hair even though his country wouldn't sponsor him when he was young because they looked at his bones and muscles and said it would be physically impossible for him to be a triple jumper and Marty St. Louis went undrafted cut out of the NHL and at age 35 was the only guy in the gym who could do that and was still leading the league in scoring. The greatest ice, the greatest land speed transformations ever, this is our standard. Marty St. Louis up, three Jonathan Edwards followed by and you know you're getting good when your thigh touches the bench before your abs.”

So you can see some different speeds within these movements and that's what's really important.

If you watch again the concentric speed, so the speed that Marty St. Louis is able to get up in this movement and then you can see the transition on the cheetah reps or the Jonathan Edwards reps, the transition between the down and up face, this is really what is most important.

I don't think we're going to find the eccentric Nordic to be anywhere near as effective in preventing hamstring injuries and measuring what people are able to do.

If we could measure the force during that transition and the peak force in the takeoff phase of this movement.

The hardest part of the movement is that first part to just get off the bench, to get the hips moving when this knee angle starts to change, that's when things really come on fire and that's when you would find the highest force there and that's what we really want.

So going from not much force to a lot of force is exactly what happens in top speed running and that's what we want to develop and when we do develop that, it's going to help top speed which is already well proven in the ATG system, people get faster when they can do these Nordics.

Ben says that he was able to dunk but he was still super slow until he got there with the Nordic and it's also one of the key preventers for ACL injuries so we want to be crazy strong in that instant and it's good to be able to go from off to on.

Going down super slowly in an eccentric is not very specific to where injuries are going to happen or sports performance.

Louis Simmons talks about all the time, amortization is king.

The ability to reverse, reversal strength, the ability to go from down to up.

BEN: “Marty St. Louis up three times followed by and you know you're getting…”

So you see that transition there on that cheetah rep. You see how fast he's going down and then boom, come back up.

That instantaneous tension is what we're after.

The ability to go very very slowly onto the bench in that last part of the range is also extremely elusive.

The reason why people stop in the cheetah reps before they get to this position is because it's extremely difficult, the mechanical, the leverage and the strength curve in that position, it's the heaviest position so it's going to be the hardest position to hold.

So I’m going to show you an example of an Australian Sevens player, he was the captain of the Australian Sevens and was quite renowned for being very resilient in the lower body.

He did have some shoulder issues I’m told, this is way back in 2016 and that's great slow strength. That's very strong and there is going to be a carryover between slow strength and fast strength but you can see within these as well, there is no instantaneous whack on the hamstring tendon so maybe training for some more speeding transitions and training the Marty St. Louis reps of getting up faster off the ground.

I’ve no doubt Ed would have had great reps maybe he would have gained just a little bit extra in terms of top speed if he was exposed to a slightly more specific contraction type. We'll probably never know.

That's where we want to get to.

What are we going to do if we aren't there?

I’m going to show you a little bit more of where we can get to with our hamstring work. So these are extreme tension exercises.

If you've done some Nordics then you know that you can see the thickness in the tissues here, this is where injury can happen, if these things aren't progressed effectively, if you go too far, too hard, too fast.

There's no option to go at maximum speed out of the bottom in that movement and that maximum speed is going to create the possibility for injury again extremely fast at the bottom and look at that instantaneous force, crazy.

So we want to be able to do these movements, we want to be able to get into these positions.

We can regress back and I’ll show you an example myself here.

Now I can't do good flat Nordics at the moment but this movement I can do.

So this movement is something that allows my body to get used to these movements without anywhere near as much pressure. Regressing the movement type can help, going slower can help but what we really want to do is build a lot of short-range strength and circulation.

So if we have soreness in the upper hamstring then this is going to be our key exercise.

We're going to be going more for reps. If you watch the tendons video, you know that it's all about high reps, long time under tension. The forward sled marching is also a really good option to go with this if the issue is with the higher hamstring.

If the issue is the upper hamstring insertion then we want to do, even bridging exercises, super high reps, and then forward sled marching.

Again that instantaneous pressure is going to be the blessing and the curse.

It's what we want for athleticism but it's what's going to challenge most.

You'll hear Louis Simmons speak a lot about using forward sled drags, standing ball upright for top speed development, for running athletes and he does speak about the jerk on the sled.

So the sled sort of stopping and starting again on concrete is part of the reason why he loves that exercise specifically.

We need to look at the exact qualities of the movements and of the exercises and of the execution.

We can produce more force when we bring the tendon into it.

If there's a whack component of like going fast then there is more tendon contribution to the movement.

That is a good thing as long as the body is able to handle it.

So we need to take that out, take all the whack, all that instantaneous spike intention out for a short period of time or for a period of time that is required to overcome the issue, and then we can return to what we were working on is the plan.

Here you see Marcus Philly, he's been working on his ATG training as well.

He may also join us on the coach's journey which will be super exciting.

The monkey foot has been added to the ATG system for this very reason, to help to reinforce this hamstring insertion in a shortened range position.

When it's shortened range there's less passive tension in the connective tissue and therefore there will be less tension and you'll notice with these, you can get a lot of muscular work.

Ben told me the first time you did these you got crazy sore in the hamstring muscles but it tends to be very muscle-dominant exercise because the hardest part is here rather than on the Nordic.

The hardest part is at the start when you're just getting off the bench. This is the hardest part.

So there's going to be a lot more connective tissue tension and it's a less muscular movement than here.

If you're confused about these concepts then you should also go back and watch the “Functional Range” video talking about long and short-range movements or check out Ben's new article on medium which talks about the short and long-range movements that we wrote together around the ATG principles.

This movement is going to be your best friend another option, I still don't have a monkey foot, I think there may be one in the mail but it hasn't arrived yet, another option would be banded hamstring curls.

Huge fan of the banded hamstring curl for this exact same reason.

It's very muscular and it allows us to get a lot of work done without loading the tendons a lot.

It's proportionally a lot more muscular.

The tendons will still work but they are not already under tension as they would be in something like a Romanian deadlift.

The easiest way to irritate your tendons is going to be doing extremely explosive work.

If you wanted to strain your tendon in the gym then you would go super hard out of the bottom of Nordics, you would go for single leg eccentric Nordics, decline Nordics and you're more than likely going to be able to pull the muscle or damage the tendon.

The other way that you would do that would be like banded hamstring, banded Romanian deadlifts, or drop catch Romanian deadlifts.

Ben was doing some of these last year.

Ben has extremely strong hamstrings as you can see and the tendons are very healthy there and he's worked on that for a significant period of time.

Now if you try and jump a chapter and jump to you know really high standard of exercise and don't have that patience, connective tissues are going to take a lot longer to adapt. You might have the muscle strength and that's why I have the “Three Scales” video as well which you should also check out.

The “Three Scales” video explains it doesn't matter if you can do the movement, if you're causing pain at the same time, you fail to exercise.

You need to go back. You need to go work at a level where there's no pain or maybe a one out of five pain.

If you're getting significant pain, if you're getting a two or three out of five pain, then you're failing the exercise regardless of whether you're making the lift or not.

I know that that's not a criterion in powerlifting or weightlifting and therefore we don't look at it that way but for athletes, for humans, we need to have better criteria of what is a passed lift, what's a made lift.

Drop catch RDLs, and banded RDLs will be super aggressive on the hamstrings and they're a great exercise to progress to but if that issue has arisen then we want to work on the short-range. So go back and focus on the muscle and circulation with the lying hamstring curl, with the monkey foot and over time you will be able to get back to the longer movements.

I will say that even while you're working on the muscular stuff, you want to work in a light way on the RDLs.

You want to work with light RDLs.

You want to work with light Jefferson curls and they will allow you to continue to maintain length and to develop length.

I have worked with some guys recently with chronic hamstring issues, career threatening million dollar athletes, career-threatening hamstring issues,

It's very important to get the length back as well.

From my understanding, those athletes haven't been asked to address length.

Most people think “oh my hamstrings are just tight. I stretch them, they don't change.”

It's just a question of load.

Again if you go and watch my video about static stretching and stretching, in general, I consider stretching just to be a form of light isometrics. As we progress to being able to handle more weight in lengthened positions then the tissues will adapt.

I haven't met a single person who can't progress their range in their hamstrings, they just simply haven't been exposed to the right movements and that's just because they haven't arrived to strengthen conditioning yet.

They're there in the gymnastic world, in the movement world and the idea is starting to arrive.

Jefferson curl isn't the only way if you really are worried about loaded spinal flexion which is a whole other topic that I’m not going to jump into at the moment, but there are other options to load the hamstring without loading the back.

The hamstrings need to be loaded in a lengthened position.

Again we need to be very progressive with this.

If we have irritated chronic tendon issues then you want to do that after you've done your short-range work and you want to be very light with it.

That is the time when static stretching is fine.

It's just a light isometric.

Get a lot of blood flow in the area and then lightly static stretch or lightly go into outer movements.

I’m not a huge fan of long-duration isometrics and therefore not a fan of static stretching but even heavy long-duration isometrics, which you'll see in some systems, you'll see Cal Dietz talk about it, Jay Schroeder.

I’m not a huge fan of that I’d rather keep movement. I think it overlaps with the concept of sleds and long sets that you see in Louis Simmons's system and the ATG system.

It just makes a lot more sense to me that life is about flow and the movement of energy.

We want to be able to get back to tissue length.

Let's do that after we've done our short-range work.

Rest if it doesn't work.

The most common thing to hear is rest and ice and those sorts of things.

If rest doesn't work initially then it's probably not going to work.

Again watch the Tendons video if you'd like to hear more about it.

I know I’ve told you a million times here to watch the other videos.

If you're serious about this I have explained these concepts in more depth in those other videos and if maybe you've found enough in this video to help you through those issues.

What's cool about this is the same concepts apply across all areas of the body.

You can reverse engineer this for the biceps, for the triceps, and for the Achilles tendon.

Every tendon in the body is going to have basically the same setup.

It's the same engineering structure, the same function, and can be dealt with in the same way.

Hope this makes a lot of sense and I would love to hear your feedback and look forward to seeing you able to train with higher volume, healthier, able to go faster, heavier and it's going to be a good time.

Enjoy!