Stressing the Tendon Seems to Help

By | October 6, 2013

Been a while since my last update. I try at least once per week to write up a micropost (those are what the little sidebar updates are called) on my progress, but up until the past 2 days, I really hadn’t progressed any since my last update. I still have slight soreness most mornings, but have noticed a marked decrease in it the past two days, which prompted me to write this post.

Two days ago a friend, who is a former tennis pro/teacher, asked me if I wanted to play tennis with him. I imagine tennis is like soccer and basketball in terms of sports to avoid when you have insertional achilles tendonosis, but I took a chance. Of course, my plan was to avoid doing any hard cuts, stops, or running. But that idea was quickly abandoned once we got warmed up. Fortunately, although there was some slight soreness during and after the roughly 60 minutes of playing, my achilles held up fine. But…I expected it would be more sore the next few days as a result. To my surprise, it felt slightly better yesterday morning. And this morning I woke up to no soreness at all. I can only assume that stressing the tendon (but not too much) is maybe causing blood flow to increase to that area and that is what is helping it heal.

I just completed a month of strict weight training. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I do a full-body weight routine and I finish that routine off with weighted eccentric heel drops. I’ve recently switched to holding a 20lb dumbbell while doing them. That’s all well and good I guess but I haven’t really noticed any real difference since I started doing that a couple of weeks ago. But one round of risky tennis and I am definitely noticing a positive difference…so it’s probably time to start stressing this thing more.

So my plan is to play tennis once per week, and maybe also prep to do a 5k.