Cycling and Hamstring Rehab

Funny, I posted basically the same question but 2.75 years after very similar injury… I’ll watch your thread too!

For what it’s worth, my experience was cycling largely came back quick with only nagging ongoing issues and everything I read said it was one of the best ways to get moving earlier in the recovery as it’s low impact.

For fun, I went back to look at my strava history on TR calendar to see how it progressed…

1+ week after - 5 mile ride at around 18W - it was really just to move things around and it hurt…
2 weeks - 10 mile ride around 50W
3 weeks - 7 mile ride around 125W
4 weeks - 20 min x 200W as part of longer ride - my FTP back then was maybe 230-240 before injury
5 weeks - 666W 30 sec sprint coming into work for a KOM that stands to this day…

After this, I was kind of back to my baseline for the time - but my volume was nearly all 45 min frequent commutes and shorter efforts - never a ride over 100 TSS the rest of the year - which hid underlying weakness around this injury from me.

When I got into longer and harder rides the following year, and started training seriously following year, I realized I had some work to do going back to that injury with it being only source of cramps when I cycle - has gotten better after thousands of miles, but still not quite right, hence my longer post tonight.

Hope this is useful and maybe you will have a better plan than I did!