Muscle strains are common. In clinical practice, we find several scenarios. Recreational athletes have concerns as to what the injury is and how long will it take to recover. Another group of patients are those who have recurrent muscle strains. Patients know what they have done (yet again), but now want to know how to prevent recurrence. A third group are competitive athletes across all sports—they want everything! Their concern centres on how quickly they can recover and how to minimise the chance of re-injury at the same time! This is especially important when finals and championships are upcoming, and at the professional level. Strategies for dealing with muscle strains are in the main time honoured rather than strongly evidence based, and it has been oft stated that there are many avenues of potential research.1

In this issue, Balius and colleagues2 (see page 818) offer a sound basis for measuring the extent of injury to the rectus femoris in soccer players. This information, which should …