Why do hamstring injuries happen and recur? Explore assessment, diagnosis, sprint biomechanics, strength profiling and rehabilitation.

What can we learn about hamstring injuries from years of working with Olympic and international sprinters? And what can one of Britain's most accomplished sprinters add from the athlete's perspective?

For the launch of the Acer House Masterclass series, Sports Osteopath & Rehabilitation Performance Coach Peter Horobin and triple Olympian and Strength & Performance Coach Adam Gemili come together for an in-depth day exploring hamstring injury assessment, diagnosis and rehabilitation.

Peter works closely with Olympic and international sprinters, with particular clinical interests in hamstring injury and athlete performance profiling. Adam brings the perspective of an athlete who has competed at the highest level of international sprinting, experienced high grade hamstring injury and rehabilitation himself, and now works in strength and performance coaching.

Together, they'll explore sprint biomechanics, clinical assessment and diagnosis, objective strength profiling and progressive rehabilitation, combining current research with clinical reasoning, practical demonstrations and experience from elite sport.

At the centre of the Masterclass is one particularly challenging question:

Why did this athlete get injured, and why did it happen on this particular occasion?

Rather than focusing solely on the injured tissue, we'll examine what happened at the moment of injury, whether the athlete was ready to tolerate that demand, the capacity of the hamstring itself, and what other physical factors may have contributed to the demands placed upon it.

What You'll Learn

Across the day, we'll explore:

Sprint biomechanics and hamstring function, and the demands placed on the hamstrings during high-speed running

Clinical assessment and diagnosis, including differential diagnosis, MRI and the British Athletics Muscle Injury Classification (BAMIC)

Why hamstring injuries occur and recur, from the moment of injury through to strength, previous injury, fatigue, recovery and wider physical factors

Objective strength profiling, including how testing can inform clinical reasoning and rehabilitation with team members from VALD supporting the event

Assessment beyond the hamstring, including sections covering lumbopelvic, neural, hip, knee, ankle and foot considerations

Progressive hamstring rehabilitation, from early-stage loading through to late-stage strength and return to performance

Practical application to high-speed running athletes, drawing on experience from elite sprinting and considering how these principles translate to football and other sports

Understanding & Diagnosing Hamstring Injuries

We'll begin by examining hamstring anatomy and function, sprint biomechanics and mechanisms of injury, before moving into clinical assessment and diagnosis.

Using real clinical cases, practical demonstrations and MRI examples, we'll explore differential diagnosis and how the injury mechanism, clinical examination and imaging can help establish the nature and extent of an injury.

We'll also examine the British Athletics Muscle Injury Classification (BAMIC) MRI cases and how it can contribute to prognosis and clinical decision-making.

Why Did It Happen?

Diagnosing the injured tissue is only part of the challenge. Particularly with recurrent hamstring injuries, the more difficult question is often why this athlete became injured on this particular occasion.

We'll use four questions to structure that investigation:

What increased the demand on the hamstring at the moment of injury?

Was the athlete less able to tolerate that demand on that particular day?

Was the hamstring adequately prepared for those demands?

Could other physical factors have increased the demand placed on the hamstring?

These questions take us from sprint biomechanics and technique through fatigue, recovery and training load to hamstring strength, architecture and previous injury, before considering wider factors including lumbopelvic function, neurodynamics and hip, knee, ankle and foot capacity.

We'll examine these alongside the current literature and practical assessment, providing a structured approach to investigating why hamstring injuries occur and why some athletes continue to experience recurrent injury.

Objective Strength Profiling

Objective testing can provide useful information about an athlete's physical capacity, but the value lies in understanding what to test, how to interpret the results and what those findings mean for rehabilitation.

We'll demonstrate the strength profiling used with speed athletes at Acer House, including assessment of maximal, isometric and eccentric hamstring strength alongside relevant hip, knee, ankle and wider physical capacities.

The emphasis throughout will be on using objective data to support clinical reasoning, identify meaningful areas for development and help individualise rehabilitation rath

Description supplied by the event organiser.