Achilles tendinitis: why stretching isn’t the answer!
You’re out for a run and that familiar feeling hits again. It might start as a tight feeling in your calf. Then, it turns into a tenderness at your Achilles. If it gets bad enough, your tendon starts feeling quite painful and you start to notice swelling. You have to start wearing open-backed shoes to keep pressure off the back of your ankle. Maybe the pain and the swelling go down, but now if you sit too long your ankle feels so stiff and it takes some time to loosen up on a run.
“I better start stretching,” you think to yourself. But, you just can’t seem to knock the pain, the stiffness, the tightness. You might actually start feeling worse. Frustration sets in. The cycle continues.
WANT RESULTS?
Stop stretching and start loading! Tendons are built to take load. And the Achilles in particular is meant to have a level of stiffness to some degree. When you run, each time your foot hits the ground your Achilles takes on at least 6x your body weight. Even if you’re out for just a 30 minute run - that load adds up!
If your Achilles can’t maintain stiffness, then it loses its ability absorb shock and transfer load. Think of a spring like on a pogo stick, if the spring has too much give, it can’t store and release enough energy to keep you going for very long.
WHERE DO YOU START?
Understand the causes. The most common causes of Achilles Tendinitis are:
Training errors
Calf weakness
If you’ve been dealing with pain that’s been lingering on for a week or more, it’s definitely time to get checked out by a physical therapist. Preferably one who specializes in runners! There are ways we can adapt your training to help keep you running. I repeat: There are ways we can adapt your training to help keep you running!
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The longer you wait to get treatment, the greater chance you have of your tendinitis turning into a more chronic issue with your Achilles where the collagen matrix of your tendon starts to break down and we see physical changes like your tendon getting thicker or a big bump forming.
If this is a brand new injury, we’d start is managing any pain and active inflammation present - a session incorporating Lymphatic Drainage Therapy can be helpful for this. Keeping you training and active while not worsening your symptoms is the next step. Going over current training plans and running volume is key for this. Choice of running shoe also plays a role and we can discuss beneficial shoe options if needed. Depending on symptom severity, loading your Achilles via a combination of isometric, concentric, and eccentric loading exercises helps to restore resiliency at the tendon (more on this another time). And finally, we always want to incorporate plyometric training to restore the propulsive capacity that is necessary for energy storage and release AKA restoring your spring!
One final tip: Collagen. If you have a history of Achilles tendon issues or an active Achilles issue, supplementing with 15-20g of collagen paired with a vitamin C source helps give your body the building blocks for resilient tendons. Mixing some collagen powder up in some OJ is super easy. My personal fav is tart cherry juice and chocolate flavored powdered collagen, it tastes like chocolate covered cherries! Drink your mixture 30-60 minutes before your workout to optimize collagen absorption and the protective tendon benefits!
In upcoming blogs, we will get more into the specifics of exercise types that are helpful in acute management of Achilles tendon pain, the role shoes can play in helping or hindering us, and what running gait analysis can help us identify as potential factors to triggering pain. There is also a great blog by my friend and colleague Dr. Dani Espino if you’d like to learn about a different types of Achilles tendinopathy and some great visuals of how our tendon is loaded during running!
For now, I really appreciate you taking the time to read this! If this is something that you’re dealing with, I encourage you to set up your FREE Discovery Call today so we can help you get out there to run at your full potential!
