With new COVID lockdowns in place for Greater Sydney and community sport taking a 2 week break, we often see these types of unscheduled breaks lead to injuries when sport resumes.
Planning ahead and implementing some strategies for injury prevention will help you navigate the lockdown break and keep you on the pitch for longer.
Hamstring injuries are common amongst professional footballers and Sunday afternoon superstars alike.
Some research into hamstring injuries has demonstrated that if the hamstring musculature is strong and flexible as opposed to weak and short then it significantly decreases the risk of hamstring injury throughout the course of a season (Timmins et al. 2016 and Bourne et al. 2018).
The Quadrant of Doom
Below is an infographic from YLM Sports Science that clearly demonstrates the relationship between strength, flexibility and injury risk. The other way to frame this is in terms of capacity. The greater the strength and movement capacity then the less likely things are to go wrong.