I was playing football back in May of this year, took a free kick and felt a muscle twinge in my right thigh . I had to come off and used the RICE method immediately, and kept applying this method for the next few days, followed by applying deep heat to the affected area. So I assumed I had pulled my quad muscle and decided to rest a few weeks. I returned to football training after a 4 week layoff - did some stretching and some warm up exercises before getting started. After about 10 minutes, I attempted to kick with my right foot and felt the muscle in the same area twinge again, this time it was a lot more painful and I felt the swelling immediately and stopped playing. Since this happened, I have been resting a lot and just doing some gentle exercise to keep the leg active. I was also having a sports/deep tissue massage every 2-3 weeks. I returned to football again last week, which was around 3 months after the last time I played and it felt ok. Didn t use my right foot too much and didn t try to swing all out when taking shots and I did well. It was aching a bit the next day, but I just assumed this was because I hadn t played on it for so long. I played football again this evening, and first shot i took after 15 seconds on the pitch, felt my leg twinge again. I couldn t believe it, after so long resting and it still hasn t healed properly! What is wrong with it? I don t know what else I m supposed to do and not sure if it may be something worse? I m going to the doctors on Monday but if anyone else out there has had a similar problem and can offer any advice on getting it healed better, and getting back to fitness would be really helpful! Thanks.