Our Achilles tendon is usually more resistant and robust than ten meters of reinforced concrete. Before it breaks, it can withstand loads of around one ton — unless it has already been damaged. Care should therefore be taken.
In our blog post, we explain how Achilles tendon problems manifest themselves and how you can systematically combat your Achilles tendon pain.
Those affected are mostly male and suffer from pain that is localized 2 — 6 cm above the base of the tendon. In addition, there is a certain sensitivity to pressure, local heating and a thickening of the tendon in the affected area (see Habets et al, 2015). Players often complain of a starting pain in the morning and pain at the beginning of a load, with the pain usually reducing again during the activity.
The exact cause of tendinopathy has not yet been fully clarified. It is assumed that the tendon cannot withstand the load of the soccer ball. If players do not temporarily reduce the load before the resilience is increased again through training, the risk of a serious Achilles tendon injury increases. Achillodynia is usually a non-inflammatory irritation that results in similar symptoms.
For a clear connection, you should of course see a doctor. Because in addition to training therapy, the doctor can use other medicinal and medicinal products. However, you shouldn't just rely on Ibu. The worst thing you can do is stop any form of movement. But what exactly does an Achilles tendon need?
Load implies mechanical stress on the Achilles tendon. In English, “load” stands for the usual load parameters of volume, intensity and frequency.
Neuroplasticity is the ability of our brain and body (this primarily refers to nerve cells and muscle cells) to adapt due to a specific load. It is therefore primarily the interplay of muscles and brain.
We can take an example from everyday life to make it more clear. If we drive a sports car (musculature) on a dirt road (nervous system), then we have to drive very slowly, otherwise the car will break down. However, if we drive on the A7 in a microcar, we can only drive very slowly although we could go faster. We therefore need our sports car on the motorway.
Let's briefly summarize the whole thing again:
If you have tendinopathy, then you are well advised to keep moving. Before everyone starts running and starts indiscriminately mistreating their tendons, we still need to embed the training into a properly controlled framework of action.
Before we go into the content of pain and rehabilitation phases, we would like to offer you in the B42 training app Stop by. There, you can systematically train against your Achilles tendon pain in the open area or with the help of our game changer.
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What we need first of all is an evaluation of pain over a certain period of time (see Thomeé, 1997; Cook & Purdam, 2009; Silbernagel et al., 2007).
To do this, we use a scale that runs from 0 to 10.
• 0 = no pain
• 10 = worst pain you can imagine
With this “pain monitoring”, you can check your pain during exercise for up to 24 — 48 hours after the end of training. It doesn't matter which stage you are at and which training you are doing. If your pain is still above a value of “5” after 48 hours at the latest, you must reduce the load, change the time interval or choose another form of exercise in the next training session.
If the pain indication is between 0 — 5, you can increase the load, extend the time interval or choose more progressive forms of exercise in the next training session (attention: depending on the level). Especially in the acute phase, it is important that you do not exert even more excessive stress (see “Pain Monitoring”) on the tendon. Of course, you can still do additive strength training or go cycling, aqua sports and use the elliptical trainer for cardio training as long as you test yourself.
In addition, you are now installing a training intervention in your “replacement training units.” Since a tendon adapts very slowly, great patience is required here. You can expect that you will probably only see an improvement about two weeks after the start of the intervention. Most protocols are designed to last twelve weeks, some of them even over a year (see Murphy et al., 2018).
In our opinion, it is advisable to incorporate the exercises entirely into your own training.
Below is an overview of a gradual stress program in tendinopathy (see Mascaro et al., 2018; Murphy et al., 2018; PMS, 2018).
Keep in mind that this intervention requires a high degree of adherence as it must be designed for the long term. For you, this means: Participate and don't plug in!
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