Why Do Footballers Get Recurrent Groin and Hamstring Injuries?

What actually happens when a footballer strains their groin or hamstring?

A groin injury in football usually involves the adductor muscles, the group on the inner thigh that pull your leg inward. When you kick a ball, these muscles work at full stretch while also trying to keep the pelvis steady. If the force is more than the muscle can handle, fibres tear. The adductor longus is the one injured most often.

Hamstring injuries happen in a different way. During a sprint, your hamstrings have to slow down the lower leg just before your foot hits the ground. This is called eccentric loading, where the muscle lengthens while contracting. It is a huge amount of force. If the muscle is already tired, or slightly overstretched by a pelvic tilt, it gives way.

The frustrating part is the pattern. You rest, you do your rehab, you go back to playing, and within weeks the same muscle goes again. Research shows hamstring reinjury rates in professional football can be as high as one in three. The reason is often that rehabilitation deals with the muscle but not the mechanical cause behind the overload.

What are the signs that your groin or hamstring problem is linked to alignment?

Not every groin injury in football is caused by alignment. But some patterns suggest the problem goes deeper than muscle tiredness alone.

If any of these sound familiar, the problem may not be the muscle itself. It may be how your pelvis and hips are positioned when you are on your feet and moving.

What causes recurring groin and hamstring strains in footballers?

Repeated adductor strains and recurring hamstring tears in football are rarely caused by one thing alone. They come from a mix of factors, many of which are hidden.

Your body is a connected chain, from your feet up through your pelvis and spine. A problem at the hip can make the groin compensate. A rotated pelvis can overload one hamstring. Pain often shows up away from its true cause. This is why working on the muscle alone does not stop the injury coming back.

How does a standing scan help with recurring football injuries?

The usual imaging for a groin or hamstring problem is an MRI or ultrasound, done lying down. These are excellent at showing muscle tears and soft-tissue damage. But they do not show alignment. When you lie down, gravity is removed, your muscles relax and the pelvis settles into a neutral position it may never actually hold when you are upright.

ScanAlign standing EOS imaging captures the pelvis, hips and lower limbs in a single standing exposure. The report measures alignment, symmetry and joint position, so your physiotherapist, surgeon or sports medicine team can see exactly what is driving the repeated injury.

What helps break the cycle of recurring groin and hamstring injuries?

ScanAlign is a diagnostic imaging clinic, not a treatment provider. But knowing the general approach can help you ask your medical team the right questions.

• Check alignment first. Before more rehab, find out whether a pelvic tilt, hip asymmetry or leg length difference is driving the overload. A standing whole-body scan is the most direct way to see this.
• Targeted rehabilitation. Once the alignment picture is clear, a physiotherapist can work on the specific imbalance rather than using a general hamstring or adductor programme.
• Eccentric strength work. Nordic hamstring exercises and similar programmes are well supported by research. But they work best when the underlying alignment lets the muscle take load evenly.
• Return-to-play screening. A follow-up standing scan can confirm that alignment has improved before you go back to match load, reducing the risk of reinjury.

Before you start treatment, or change the one you are on, it is worth getting a detailed diagnosis. Knowing whether the cause sits in the pelvis, the legs or the spine changes what will actually help.

For more on how imaging can be part of a structured approach, read about sports injury prevention.

Frequently asked questions