I was browsing the pages of Clinical Sports Medicine by Brukner and Khan to find the Nordic Hamstring Curl in all its glory.
Basically it is performed by allowing the player to fall forward and then resist the fall for as long as possible with their hamstrings. Needless to say - cue the laughter as Joe hits the ground using his face as a brake.
I have used this before in training. I will be using it again. Here is the progression that you can do to throw it into your warm up prior to getting into your rugby training.
Week Sessions per Week Sets and Reps
1 1 2 x 5
2 2 2 x 6
3 3 3 x 6
4 3 3 x 8
5-10 3 3 x 12,10,8
Source: Mjolsnes
Application for the Amateur Rugby Player
Use in your warm up drill. Pair up and get through them. Good if you have a player out with recurring hamstring pulls and you can liasie with your physical therapist/physio etc. Does create some soreness though so keep to the progression outlined above. That doesn’t mean you woss out of not doing it through fear of tiring your players. Just use it as a warm up drill.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to thank you for the Free up dateing on Fitness Training and Rugby Drills. It really helps me in conducting the training and drills to my rugby team.Thanx for the guidance hope that yu’ll send me more of yuour program.
No matter what I do to warm up my hamstring it always ends up sore and tender after training.
Its also always the worst and feels odd when I train; whether on the pitch or in the gym!
What else can I be doing?
Cheers
Tom
get it looked at Tom. Could be your back causing you issues.
Dear John,
First of all thank you for all the help you provide us in our day to day rugby life.
Very interesting point this of the hamstrings’ injuries.
I am currently training a 4th division senior team and directing at the same time our whole rugby proyect, at my club Uni Bilbao Rugby.
I work as a GP and as part of my CV I got a degree in Osteopathy and 5 years experience as professor of medicine in the Bilbao Manual Medicine School. In the sillabus of the school the students are teached some interesting things about anatomy of the knee and about “Muscular chains”.
One thing about anatomy: all the muscles producing a flexión of the joint happen to jump over it, so when you stretch the knee tour hamstrings and the triceps suralis (Calf muscles) are stretched at a time, and further more the calf mucles jump over the ankle joint down to the heel . This anatomyc fact helps a lot to understand how the sortage on the hamstrings is in many instances a problen of the posterior muscular chain extending fron the tos flexors up to the neck erector muscles.
In my club’s training sessions I heve included some stretching of the posterior muscular chain becuase an stretched claf complex with an stretched gluteal complex is paramaount in order to diminish the pressure on the hamstrings.
On top of what a I have already said the reason why this stretching is very importan has to do with the facta that the hamstrigs have a hughe proprotion of poorly elastic fibers an a far lesser part of muscular fibers. So de usual stretchig be it balistic, non balistic, etc. is useless since those fibers need longer periods of stretching. The good thing is that a proper stretching of the muscular chain lasts longer and relatively simple to achieve.
Please check the works of “Suchard” an “Chaines musculaires”
Yours in rugby
Josu