The Cleveland Browns are opening their preseason schedule tonight with a game against the Green Bay Packers and two of their starting wide receivers will miss the game with hamstring injuries.
While not severe, the injuries to Corey Coleman and Andrew Hawkins have kept both players out of practice for more than a week, which if it were the regular season would be troubling.
There is really nothing you can do to completely prevent a hamstring injury, but there are several exercises that you can perform to strengthen your hamstrings and minimize your risk of hurting them.
Before we get to those, let’s take a look at your hamstrings.
Your hamstrings are made up of three large muscles that run along the back of your thighs: the biceps femoris, semimembranosus and semitendinosus. They function to bend your knees and move your hips backwards, and are used daily in such activities as walking, running and jumping.
According to livestrong.com, the two hamstrings attached to the inside of your knees rotate your lower legs inward while the third hamstring, attached to the outer border of your knees, rotates your lower legs outward. Your hamstrings are also your body’s braking system as they slow the speed of your leg as it goes forward while kicking or running.
Your hamstrings also help with the backward movement of your thighs, what is known as hip extension. While the gluteal muscles in your buttocks are the main muscles that perform hip extension, the hamstrings help out as you move from sitting to standing, squatting or jumping. The hip extension performed by your hamstrings also helps push you forward while running.
Here are five exercises that will give your hamstrings a great workout and help keep them in top shape.
Single-leg deadlifts
Balance on your left foot, engage the abs, and bend forward at the hips while reaching toward the ground with your right hand. Hold on to a five- to 10-pound weight and raise your right leg behind you for counterbalance. Tighten the buttocks as you return to the starting position. Keep your knee relaxed and back flat throughout the movement. Switch legs. (active.com)
Sled workouts
When you work with a weighted sled you are performing what is known as a concentric movement — a type of muscle activation that increases tension on a muscle as it shortens, such as when you perform a curl or a bench press. But those exercises also have an eccentric, or negative, movement, such as when you lower the bar back to your chest during a bench press. Since sled training — whether you are pulling or pushing — only has concentric movements, you can give your muscles a great workout without overtaxing them too much.
Skater Lunge
This move works the quads, hamstrings, and glutes. Begin with your feet shoulder-width apart and the arms at your sides. Take a large step backward with your left leg and cross it diagonally behind the right leg. Meanwhile, extend your right arm out to the side and swing the left arm across the hips. Hop about two feet to the left and come back to the beginning stance. Repeat with the other leg; that’s one set. Do three sets of 20 reps. (health.com)
Romanian deadlift
The key in the Romanian deadlift is to move your butt back. Think of it as a horizontal movement, as opposed to a vertical movement like our other deadlifts. In this style, our butts move back with the knees slightly bent. Done correctly, even with no weight, by the time your hands reach the knees, your hamstrings should feel like they are going to rip off. If you can touch your toes, you are doing it wrong. Keep your head up, trying to create as much distance between your chin and your butt as you can. (bodybuilding.com)
Box squats
A properly executed box squats can recruit a ton of hamstring tissue. For this particular purpose, they beat squatting to full depth because there’s less quad involvement due to lower-knee flexion and greater hip flexion. What matters most is that you come to a full stop on the box while staying tight. The second you let go of your tension through your lower and upper back, this becomes an unsafe movement. Remember to use a slightly wider, toes-out stance when squatting this way, too. This will ensure that your shins stay more vertical to shift the emphasis away from your quads. (muscleandfitness.com)
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