The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [150]
My right hamstring felt odd.
“Nice!” Joe yelled out from the start line, and I headed over.
“5.61 seconds.” He showed me the reading on the hand-held receiver and smiled. “You’ve broken the gym record for a one session improvement. It was two-tenths of a second, and this is more than three-tenths of a second.”
“My hamstring feels a little tight,” I mentioned as I headed back to the starting line. Joe stopped and looked at me.
“In that case, we’re done for today.”
He continued:
“I’ve learned from experience—I’m older and wiser than I once was—that you stop when the hamstrings feel tight. That’s a sign of a pending tear.”
“But it feels so tight. Shouldn’t I stretch it a bit?”
“No, that’s the biggest and most common mistake. It feels like it’s contracting, so people stretch it, but it’s already overstretched. You need ice and Hannah Montana.”
Hannah Montana?
“Excuse me?”
“Ice and arnica montana.”
I’d misheard him, of course. Arnica montana, not Hannah Montana, is also known as wolf’s bane. It’s a European flowering plant that contains a flavonoid called helenalin, which has made it popular among professional athletes for anti-inflammation.
DeFranco believed that, had I not pulled my hamstring, I would have reached between 5.51 and 5.53 that session and then dropped another one- to two-tenths after a week of additional training.
Lesson learned: keep your chin tucked and don’t look up. It pulls your torso upright and leads to striking with the heel, which can cause hamstring tears. The forces generated in the 40-yard dash are obscene. Keep in mind that DeFranco coaches athletes who can deadlift 600 pounds for repetitions, and his advice to bodybuilders who want to develop their “hammies” is simple:
Sprint.
I’d be getting back to sprinting, but the first order of business was ice and Hannah Montana. I needed to heal.
The next leg of my journey was going to require a hell of a lot more than 40 yards.
Is there anything I could have done to prevent my hamstring pull?
If there is one injury Joe understands, it is the hamstring pull. His pre-hab prescription was effectively threefold:
1. Train the natural glute-ham raise. Nothing in the weight room can mimic the demands of sprinting. The next best thing, though, is the natural glute-ham raise, which builds an incredible foundation of eccentric strength in the hamstring. This helps prevent pulls and tears during the foot-strike portion of sprinting, when the load is greatest. The Asshole demonstrates proper form here:
www.fourhourbody.com/asshole-demo.
According to Joe, athletes who can perform strict natural glute-ham raises rarely pull hamstrings. If you don’t have the equipment, a partner can hold your ankles for this movement, which is much harder than it looks. Start slow and keep your hands in front of your face to avoid plastering it on the floor. See the Sorinex machine, which I have at home, in the “Tools and Tricks.”
2. Focus on hip extension strength. Forget leg curls and knee flexion, with the one exception of the glute-ham raise. Otherwise, you should focus on strong hip extension. To prevent pulls and increase sprint speed, focus on these movements:
Reverse hyperextensions (reverse “hypers”)
Regular hyperextensions
Kettlebell or dumbbell swings
Sled dragging (train both upright posture and a 45-degree “acceleration” lean)
Supine hip thrusts (see www.fourhourbody.com/hip)
If you can’t do reverse hypers or a natural glute-ham raise, or if you lack the equipment, DeFranco and his acolytes recommend supine hip thrusts (see the video demo above), which can also be done with a barbell for added resistance (see my video with 415 pounds here: www.fourhourbody.com/hipthrusts).
I love this exercise. It is also the money move for quickly relieving back pain from too much time at the laptop. Random digression: