The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › Hamstring Insertion Injury
The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › Injuries, Restrictions, Ailments, Pose Modifications › Injuries › Hamstring Insertion Injury
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Hi
I have recently discovered Bikrams yoga and love it!! I’ve only been doing it a month and am getting injured and the instructors at my studio keep pushing. The biggest is a hamstring insertion injury on the left side, I’ve tried different things like keeping that leg bent which gets “lock your knee of don’t push out in the pose” or locking my knee and not bending as far forward in the pose as I can. The problem is neither of these things have helped and I really don’t want to quit. I think the issue is I’m flexible to begin with so its easy for me to push. Now i think from babying my left hamstring my right is hurting as well as the inside of my left knee I believe from fixed firm pose. Another issue I notice is there is so much forward bending in the sequence its hard to avoid hurting it further. I did take 10 days off after 3 weeks but that wasn’t enough time for it to heal.I really dont know what to do at this point to heal it, I hope you can help and thanxs!!
I have a couple of ideas to try… Hamstrings seem to stay over-stretched a long time. Try to engage your quads whenever you are opening your hamstrings. Keep both sides as equal as you can, only go as far on both sides as your injured side can go. Find time -20 min or so – to sit and gently stretch your legs. Be very patient! (Hardest of all) Hopefully you will be practicing for a long time to come.
Use this as an opportunity to learn new things about your body. Good luck with your recovery!Hello Lulu
I am concerned that you are feeling that what you are doing is causing injury. It does mean there are some techniques that you are employing/learning which are simply not right. Luckily there are changes that you can make.
It is not entirely clear which poses you are indicating in the post. But the first one must be Standing Head to Knee. Yes you are correct. Lock the standing leg and do not proceed past the first part of this pose until you have the ability to completely lock that standing locked knee for the ENTIRE 60 seconds.
The mere act of fully engaging your quadriceps muscles when you lock the knee has the effect of relaxing the opposing muscle – the hamstrings.
BUT
Do NOT generalize this out to every pose. Because there are particular poses where a bent leg will give you much more stretch. Sounds odd I know but please go and take a look at the blog post about Opening Up Your Hamstrings With Hot Yoga. This technique will apply to Hands to Feet as well. Plus take a look at the posts on Floor Head to Knee and Intense Stretch for other tips to help your hamstrings.
Basically at the moment, some of what you are doing even though you are doing it with the intention of helping your hamstrings heal, is actually having the opposite and unintended consequence of CAUSING more problems, making it worse. Yikes.
Please get back to us here with your response, your discoveries etc. I have a feeling there may be other particular poses that are causing you grief. If they are then check out the posts for those ones in particular and see if the answers are in there already. And also feel free to open a new thread to cover any unanswered questions! I will answer them in pose specific posts and link it back to this one for you! :cheese:
Finally as a beginner student, not surprisingly you want to pay attention and to respond to everything your teacher asks you to do. I would really request that you pay attention to your body’s voice because at the moment it is screaming out (sometimes in pain!). So something has got to change. Please don’t go beyond that point of discomfort – where you know you are doing good – into pain. And please don’t cross that pain threshold when and because your instructor tells you to do it (either wittingly or unwittingly). Remember they are teaching a whole class and unless they are also teaching every individual and saying stuff like “Lulu, do it this way because you have tight hamstrings” or “those of you with tight hamstrings do it this way” then learn what it is you should and should NOT be listening to.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Wow Gabrielle, thanxs for the reply. There is so much fabulous information on this site – its going to take a while for me to go through it all but I’m so glad I found it. I really want to stay with this practice and these injuries have been making me wonder.
Do you think I can heal these while continuing to practice?
You say that what I am doing is actually hurting me but I was unsure of what you were referrng to, of course I dont want to do this.
In reply to your post…I do feel like its something I am doing yet there are so many poses that are bothering me I am having trouble figuring out how to correct them. One thing i decided to try since your post was to keep my knees locked and only bend forward until I felt the pull at the insetion. The forward bending seems to be the issue also as Jenny O commented about engageing the quad, I think this is something I have a really hard time doing.
The poses:
Standing Head to Knee – I tried locking my knee and bending forward only util I felt slight pain and I didnt kick out
Standing bow Pulling – Locked my knee and kicked out but only bent forward until I felt pain
Standing Separate leg Stretcing – Straighted my knees, grabbed my heels and bent forward until I felt pain and then tried to concentrate on stretching my spine and working more on stretching that then on touching my head to the ground which is more forward of a bend
Triangle bothers it too
Separate leg strectching – on these I didnt lock my knees
In Tree and toe Stand I feel it but it feels good to strech it in those poses
Separate leg stretching – is a painful one – afterwards it always hurts to turn around and even sit on the sore area. On these i also didnt lock my knees
I know theres a lot here, I really appreciate your help!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Lulu
I hope by now you have had a chance to read the article I pointed you to before about the hamstrings. You mention a number of times that you have problems with Standing Sep Leg Stretching and I am positive you will find the key there: Opening Up Your Hamstrings With Hot Yoga.
With regard to the poses you mention in your last post:
With Standing Bow Pulling, I once again recommend you looking at the posts for that pose. In a nutshell you should NOT be consciously bending forward at all. It is all about the kick.
Re triangle: would you tell me whether it is both legs bothering you or just the bent or only the extended leg?
In Separate Leg Stretching it could be that although your legs are bent your arms may be bent too, which will mean your body is too far forward. Let me know!
Lulu I know now that since posting you have purchased my manual (humble and grateful thanks) so I am hoping that the step by step pose descriptions with photos will assist you greatly.
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂 -
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