Hamstring Injury Return to Play: a

In this episode of the How I Rehab podcast by Sports MAP we chat with Paolo Perna a PDP Physiotherapist in a Professional Football Academy.

Paolo uses his knowledge from his research on return to play out comes and his clinical experience to provide key clinical takeaways when managing the injured athlete's return to play process.

Paolo provides us a background on this career and research to date.
Where did Paolo’s interest in RTP come from?
How Paolo thinks about the RTP process from the initial injury.
What aspects may guide your prognosis?
How to optimize criteria based testing to be specific to the injured area of the muscle.
How Paolo breaks down the rehab process into 3 key phases.
What does Paolo use as the key criteria to return to sprinting?
What are common difficulties in the back end of the rehab program?
What does RTP actually mean? Are we talking about the same thing? The importance of being clear with our language?
Key considerations for a RTP.

This episode is supported by HRIG , The Occlusion Cuff & Iron Edge

References mentioned

1 . Optimising the Late-Stage Rehabilitation and Return-to-Sport Training and Testing Process After ACL Reconstruction.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004...


2. Optimising the 'Mid-Stage' Training and Testing Process After ACL Reconstruction
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31782...

3. Paolo Perna- One test does not fit all: Tailoring hamstring Return-to-Play assessment in football
https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2024/11/22...

4. Return-to-play criteria following a hamstring injury in professional football: a scoping review
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39666...

5. Evolving the Control-Chaos Continuum: Part 1 – Translating Knowledge to Enhance On-Pitch Rehabilitation- Taberner 2025
https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jos...

6. Progressing rehabilitation after injury: consider the ‘control-chaos continuum’
Editorial Matt Taberner
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/53/18/1132

7 .Structuring the daily progression from return-to-run to full team integration
https://martin-buchheit.net/wp-conten...

8. Do non-contact injuries occur during high-speed running in elite football? Preliminary results from a novel GPS and video-based method. Aiello et al 2023
https://www.jsams.org/article/S1440-2...