Why Hamstrings Keep Flaring Up
If you work with athletes, you’ve probably heard it before:
“It’s not torn, but it just doesn’t feel right.”
“It niggles all season.”
“Feels never-quite-fixed.”
Hamstring pain isn’t unique to one sport, I’ve seen it in football players, soccer players, basketballers and more, and the pattern is interesting: it’s often not a big tear or a dramatic injury.
Loads of athletes come in saying they’ve done all the rehab under the sun such as like Nordic hamstring curls, Romanian deadlifts, hip hinges, and yet during the season the discomfort comes back when training load spikes. It’s almost like their hamstring is stuck in a loop of overprotection and mistrust.
So, What’s Really Going On?
When I start assessing someone with chronic hamstring complaints, I try not to look at the hamstring first. That might seem counter-intuitive but hear me out.
Hamstrings aren’t designed to be the main engine of force or the sole shock absorbers. If they’re constantly grumbling or feeling “tight”, chances are something else in the chain isn’t doing its job, and the hamstring has been picking up the slack.
Has this person had past knee pain or instability?
Are they offloading shock through the ankle/calf?
Is the hip doing braking and control work properly?
Are they lacking force distribution across the limb chain?
If any of those areas aren’t pulling their weight, suddenly the hamstring is pushed into roles it wasn’t meant to do. It’s not the root source, it’s the last man standing in a dysfunctional load sharing system.
This is the big takeaway:
chronic hamstring discomfort often reflects compensation patterns, not structural damage.
Why Standard Rehab Sometimes Falls Short
Here’s the twist. Most of the athletes I see have already done “all the exercises”. Strength, mobility, sliders, Nordic curls, they ticked every box. Yet come season, that nagging sensation returns.
That tells me something important:
the issue isn’t always muscle weakness or lack of training volume.
Muscle fibres themselves might be pretty robust. What’s often lagging is the nervous system’s trust and control over the muscle in complex, loaded situations. The hamstring becomes guarded not because it’s weak, but because the brain still thinks it’s a risky zone.
So simply stretching it out or “releasing the muscle” can sometimes make things worse, it tells the nervous system that this place is now even less stable than before, and it doubles down on protection.
A Different Kind of Approach: Nervous System Re-Learning
Instead of just working on the tissue, I prioritise calming the nervous system first.
That’s where dry needling and controlled manual input come in, not to inflict pain for pain’s sake, but to send a predictable, non-threatening signal to the brain that says:
“This isn’t dangerous”
In chronic pain science, we know that tissues can heal, but the nervous system can stay in a protective mode long after structural repair. What we’re really doing is re-training perception, not just resetting tissue tension.
The key isn’t how hard we push, it’s how controlled and safe the input feels to the nervous system.
Then What?
Right after that controlled input, we reconnect movement quickly. You want the brain to experience movement without pain or threat, to slowly revise its protective strategies. That’s why the work immediately after the treatment matters as much as the treatment itself.
One Big Chain, Not a Standalone Muscle
We look at the entire lower limb kinetic chain, from the foot and ankle, up through the knee and hip, into the pelvis, rather than just isolating one muscle.
When one segment is overloaded or compensating, the chain redistributes load in awkward ways. The hamstring ends up doing things it wasn’t supposed to, especially braking and shock absorption, and that’s when it starts to complain.
So hamstring discomfort isn’t always a hamstring problem, it’s often a movement coordination and load distribution problem.
How I Like to Train It
Isolation exercises have their place, but in this case they’re not the magic bullet. What does help is training that forces the body to co-ordinate and share load across the entire lower limb.
For example:
Slightly unstable loads like a water bag carry
Controlled dynamic movements that require balance and timing
Functional drills that integrate foot, ankle, knee and hip control
These kinds of exercises don’t make the hamstring stronger in isolation, they make the whole system smarter and more collaborative.
Bottom Line
Chronic hamstring issues aren’t stubborn because they’re tough to fix. They’re stubborn because often the hamstring was never the main problem to begin with.
The real solution isn’t “more reps, more pain, more volume.”
It’s about reorganising how the body distributes load, calming protective nervous system patterns, and retraining movement so the hamstring doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting on its own.
Want help with chronic hamstring issues or other persistent aches? We always start with a thorough assessment and a tailored plan, not just chasing symptoms. Book in if you’re ready to tackle the root cause.
