Hamstring Injury Treatment in Los Angeles

Hamstring strains are one of the most common injuries in sprinting and cutting sports — football, soccer, track, basketball, lacrosse. The grade-1 or grade-2 strain itself usually calms down in a few weeks. The real problem is what happens after: the injury feels better, the athlete returns, opens up to full speed — and the same spot grabs again.

That cycle is well documented. Roughly one in three hamstring strains recurs within the first year of returning to sport, and re-injuries are often worse than the original.¹ In one season-long study of male college American football players, a hamstring strain struck about a third of the roster.² The usual culprits — lingering weakness, reduced flexibility, and residual scar tissue that never fully remodels — leave the tissue vulnerable the moment an athlete asks for top-end speed again.^1,2

Here is the piece most work-ups miss: a stubborn hamstring often isn’t a muscle problem at all. Recent imaging research shows that persistent pain after a hamstring injury frequently traces to thickened, stuck fascia around the tendon and aponeurosis — the connective-tissue sheet the muscle pulls through — rather than to the muscle belly itself.³ When that fascia stops sliding, the athlete keeps feeling a “pull” that an MRI of the muscle may call normal.

Hamstring hydrodissection is a minimally invasive, ultrasound-guided procedure that uses a precise stream of fluid to separate fascial layers that have become bound down and adhered around the hamstring. Under real-time ultrasound, the physician watches the fluid open the stuck plane at exactly the spot that hurts — restoring glide to tissue that had stopped sliding. It is a targeted application of Hydrofascia Release™, delivered in the office in a matter of minutes.

This isn’t a repackaged cortisone shot. The goal isn’t to flood the area with steroid — it’s to mechanically free fascia that scar and adhesion have glued to the tissue beneath it. Dr. Jacques Courseault, MD, first described and published the fascial hydrodissection technique for chronic hamstring injury in Current Sports Medicine Reports in 2019⁴ — and now performs it at our Beverly Hills clinic.

Independent researchers are now reporting the same idea: a 2025 study (co-authored by leading fascia anatomist Carla Stecco) found that ultrasound-guided fascial hydrorelease sharply reduced persistent post-hamstring-injury pain, with no recurrences over follow-up.³

A hamstring that keeps failing at speed is a mechanical problem, and it needs a mechanical look. Before any procedure, we start with Fascial Mapping® — a systematic, ultrasound-based exam that scans the hamstring and the connected chain to pinpoint exactly where the fascia has thickened, adhered, or lost its glide. That’s the difference between treating a spot and chasing a symptom.

If the map shows a fascial adhesion driving the pain, hamstring hydrodissection releases it. If it shows a tendon or attachment problem, we have other tools. And because the fascia connects head to toe, mapping often reveals why the hamstring keeps losing — a hip, pelvis, or calf restriction quietly overloading it. To understand the tissue itself, see our Fascia Medicine overview.

A recurring hamstring hits student-athletes at the worst possible time — recruiting showcases, combine season, conference play. The pressure to rush back is exactly what feeds the re-injury cycle. Our job is to get the tissue actually right, then rebuild it so it holds:

Hydrodissection is the signature procedure, but a hamstring that won’t heal sometimes needs more than one lever. We match the treatment to what the map shows:

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