The debate about the mechanisms of hamstring injuries in sprinting in the Journal of Sport and Health Science reminds of the discussion of the force enhancement mechanisms in stretch-shortening cycles (SSCs) 20 years ago in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics. The controversies concerning the proposed mechanisms were mainly due to the difference in the levels of observation between animal and human studies.An important question debated 20 years ago was "Are the muscle fibers and muscle spindles lengthened during SSCs?" a question that is also important to the current discussion on hamstring strain injuries. Yu et al. proposed that excessive muscle strain is the direct, if not exclusive, cause of muscle strain injury. However, they ignored the idea that there might be different types of acute hamstring strains: high-speed running type and stretching-type (i.e., kicking) injuries. The animal experiments, cited by Yu et al. provide the general mechanisms for stretching-type injuries. However, they should not necessarily be generalized to hamstring injuries in sprinting because not all animal studies support the notion that high strains are necessary to cause muscle injuries.
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