Some months ago back in the spring, I went for my usual run on the beach (3.5 miles/5kms).  When I  felt my right ham string tighten up when I finished, I wasn't overly concerned because I hadn't trained for a week or so before the run and it seemed to be nothing more than a tight muscle...  They say that the only thing one can do for a pulled ham string is rest it, but I didn't think that my pull was that serious, which means I didn't give it the rest that I should have.  In fact, I went the other way, i.e. I spent time stretching it and more time on the massage table to work out the knots. 

Well, as I said, rest is key...  So having just been in NYC for 2.5 weeks - with an overly full schedule and no place to work out - I finally rested my leg.  Or so I thought...  Back home, this past Wednesday, Ombra and I did a full karate workout in Flamingo Park and man I did I feel how tight my entire right leg, gluteus maximus and lower back is tied up!  Which led me back to my massage therapist yesterday for a 90-(painful) minute session...

The crazy thing about a ham string injury is that when you rest it, you also lose your flexibility - everything gets tighter by nature.  One finds oneself (sadly) back at the starting point on the stretching and limbering up scale; and that is where I am...

Enter the 'Rumble Roller'...  a 12-inch long, 4-inch wide roller with high-profile bumps along the entire surface. Those bumps aren't just the whim of a crazy designer, though. Their size, shape, spacing, and elasticity all contribute synergistically to their effect.

According to the web site, RumbleRoller products are carefully engineered to:

• Stimulate deeper layers of muscle tissue,
• Stretch your muscle and fascia in multiple planes,
• Concentrate massage pressure to more reliably enable autogenic inhibition,
• Improve access to soft tissue near bony prominences (e.g. your spine, scapula, and pelvis)

I'm expecting my roller to arrive in the next day or two... not a moment too soon!  So I'll be reporting on its effectiveness in the weeks to come, crossing my fingers that this will be the tool to remove the deep tissue knots that are causing my ham string to bring me so much grief!

Hoping for the best, watch this space...