Messed Up Semitendinosus

[Sarah South]

I am not well versed in the body's musculature, but by looking at a diagram, it seems as if I've done something to my semitendinosus. I'm 31, and have been lightly working on increasing my mobility over the last year... albeit not consistently. I've always had weak legs, and I have been relatively sedentary for 15 years. Two weeks ago I was 'warming up' so that I could 'exercise' lol, by doing what I think are cherry pickers (straight legged, reaching toward the ground between legs, and popping back up). After about 15 of these I was beat (sad), and I didn't do anything beyond that because it was so intense for the back of my legs. Two days later, DOMS set it... and it was awful. I don't think those muscles have seen much activity. A couple days after that, I decided to try and stretch one of my legs a bit, and I messed it up... now it is super tight and feels like a massive charley horse that doesn't go away. I was able to go relatively far down toward my toes in a standing pike, but now I have to bend my knees to do anything because of the pain in this one leg. My other leg is 80% recovered (after 2 weeks!) but a lot more tight/less flexible. Any advice? I've been doing tiny little stretches on the bad leg which seem to help, but I'm just not sure what I should be doing going forward. My goal is to become more mobile, and stronger, but not to injure myself further. What can I do to warm up these muscles properly in order to stretch them a bit everyday and hopefully move past this lack of range of motion? Any advice is much appreciated!

[Alessandro Mainente]

Hi Sarah, the biggest problem of the injury mechanism is that the muscle is WEAK. you need to begin a strength program so that your structure is able to handle the stress.