Achilles Tendon Stretch

By | May 12, 2014

Over the past few weeks I’ve been really stressing my achilles and I’m happy to report that I’m relatively pain-free still. I say “relatively” because I did have some very slight soreness the next day after playing a ridiculous 9 games of squash (and I’m a horrible player that has to run a lot, do lots of cuts, starts/stops, etc. to compensate for poor positioning) and then after that I got home and my wife talked me into doing some jogging at the track in order to get ready for a 5k that she and my kids want to participate in. With the 5k being next weekend, and I having not run anything more than a mile in quite some time, I figured I’d better do 2 miles and see how I felt so that I would know whether I would be able to participate or not.

I was able to do the 2 miles just fine, though my legs felt like 200 pound dumbbells during it because of the squash games earlier in the day. The next morning my achilles was slightly sore and has remained so off and on for the past few days. I’m not too concerned though. My brain tells me to avoid squash but I want to compete in *something* sport.

I still keep up with my weightlifting routine, though I’m scaling it back to twice per week. I need to stretch more often than that though. I had been doing stretches prior to the weightlifting 3 times per week. Saw this video today and thought it might be a good thing to add to my routine. I recall a physical therapist having me do it last year for a couple of weeks. I have mainly been doing Gastroc and other types of stretches, usually 3x per week along prior to my weightlifting routines, or if doing something intensive like squash or running I will stretch both before and after.

Have you done this stretch and experienced improvement (or negative consequences)? Leave a comment and let me know!