Dr Martin McIntyre is the founder and clinical lead at the Sports Injuries & Sports Medicine (SISM) Clinic in Castlebar Co Mayo, a centre that has become a hub for both elite athlete care and applied sports medicine research in Ireland. With a background in sports medicine and performance science, Martin has spent years working across high-performance environments in Gaelic games, rugby, and professional team sport, developing a particular focus on hamstring injury, recurrence, and return-to-play decision-making.

Out of that work came the development of the Hamstring Risk and Injury Gauge, or HRIG – a hamstring-specific assessment and rehabilitation system designed to measure and train hamstring function in positions that closely reflect sprinting and real injury mechanisms. HRIG is now being used across elite football, rugby, athletics, and high-performance settings worldwide, supporting injury risk screening, readiness-to-train monitoring, and evidence-informed return-to-play.

Topics covered: 

– Research underpinning HRIG

– How isometric hamstring testing is changing the way we think about injury risk, rehabilitation, and performance. 

– How HRIG fits into the world of elite sport 

Links

·       HRIG & SISM Clinic: https://www.sism.ie/hrig

·       Reliability & Bilateral Strength Imbalances of a Novel Isometric Hamstring Test:
https://commons.nmu.edu/isbs/vol40/iss1/101/

·       McIntyre PhD – Hamstring muscle strength assessment and the association with injury risk in Gaelic football:
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/18549/1/2022McIntyrephd.pdf

·       Case Report – Conservative management of a 3c intramuscular tendon injury in elite Gaelic football:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398954189_Conservative_management_of_3c_biceps_femoris_intramuscular_tendon_injury_A_case_report_of_an_elite-level_inter-county_Gaelic_football_player

Contact details

·       Email: martinmcintyre@hrig.ie

First published by the Football Medicine & Performance Association (FMPA) February 2026