Leg pain persisting a year after “minor” injury

I was doing a Boulder problem that involved a lot of high heel hooks, cammmed my right heel a little too hard and felt a slight tightness after I came down, the backside of my thigh was very sore for the rest of the day but the resting pain went away the next day. However I have a persistent pain that flares up and subsides running along the back of my thigh in the hamstring area that is still persistent a year later. Any tips on what I could have done/recovery? Figured I’d ask here before finally sucking it up and going to a pt

Sounds like you tore your hamstring heel-hooking? I have recently done the same. My PT advised glute bridges, hamstring tendon glides, and heavy deadlifts. Luckily, the hamstring is a large group of muscles and you normally only injure one of them at a time. So your biomechanics can work around it. Work your way up in weights in deadlifting to what you can do 5x. That's my current hamstring PT regimine. 

I second that it sounds like you had some degree of hamstring strain/tear.
After a muscle strain has healed, that area will often feel stiff/tight due to residual scar tissue. Scar tissue is not as *flexible* as the original uninjured tissue, and can therefore “flare up” (cause pain and/or tightness) under significant use. If this is the cause of your pain, then good news, it’s very treatable. You just have to work on getting the muscle’s normal flexibility and strength back. First thing I will say though, is that if in doubt, definitely go see your PT!
What you could try at home: First, warmup the muscle for 10-15 mins (i.e. walking at a moderate pace). Immediately following that, deeply massage the main point/area of pain for 6-7mins (google “cross friction massage”). Then stretch your legs and hips, paying extra attention to the hamstrings. You could finish up either with that, or with a few exercises (like the previous comment mentioned!). Glute bridges, single leg RDL’s, hamstring curls, and/or bodyweight lunges are all good exercises that may be helpful for you. The goal would be to get equal strength and flexibility compared to the opposite leg. As always though, definitely consult with your healthcare professional! Heal up, and climb on:)

Even in my younger years, hamstring or groin strain can nag for a long time. Often you may have healed physically but your brain is still guarded against the old injury.

Massage & hot yoya always helps; but I've also had pretty good experiences w/ ecentric exercises, though you may need to be creative w/ finding a way/angle to load the offending muscle when it's close to fully extended (exercises that is hard when the muscle is fully contracted but easy when fully extended is less useful for this purpose). Of the mentioned exercises above, single leg RDL fits the description the best (you can try doing just the lowering part).

I presume that you pulled a hamstring. Did you do any rehab on it? Just letting it heal on its own would most likely have caused scar tissue to form. That could explain persistent pain after a while.

I've pulled my left hamstring twice so far. Second time I had some bruising that ended up near the backside of my knee. Both times I got back in shape real fast by doing the starr rehab protocol. Google for actual info. The following is what I did, but I might be an idiot.

The protocol consists of loading the injured area with an excercise (for hamstrings a squat or a deadlift) with a light weight for several sets of 20-25 reps after around 2 days of the injury. That is repeated and the weight is increased each session slowly. After a few days the reps should go down as the weight goes up. It'll hurt while you do it but its possible to distinguis a blurred slight discomfort from a pain that causes a new injury.

After a injury has been allowed to scar I don't have any real insights. Training through the flare ups might make them go away after a while but I'm no expert. Some type of strengthening work might be beneficial as well.

Thanks for all the reapplies I honestly forgot about this thread! Like most of y’all suggested I let it heal naturally. The scar tissue tips have been a BIG help