ACHILLES TENDINITIS: what is the problem?
Our
Running Forum again raised the hot topic of “Achilles Tendinitis”, a
common injury of lots of people, especially runners, which deprivates them not only of pleasure of running, but also influences their entire life. They spend a lot of money, time and efforts to cure themselves from this painful injury to be able to continue doing what they love to do, and what saves them from stress and helps them to keep their healthy lifestyle. But in many cases traditional medicine fails to help them and even after costly surgery they are still not able to resume running.
Many of them are looking for an answer to their problem, and it may seem that help has arrived in the form of the article
“Achilles heel, tendons, achilles tendinitis therapy and surgery”written by Owen Anderson from
Peak Performance which appeared on their website at www.pponline.co.uk. The tone of the article makes you think that
traditional treatments for this kind of injury are not very successful (which I strongly support) and proposes to look at two quite similar approaches for solving the problem. One of them is coming from the research in Sport Medicine Unit of the University Hospital of Northen Sweden in Umea, Sweden, about eccentric loading of calf muscles. The other one is Walt Reynolds’s Special Achilles Strengthener (SAS), which “actually works better than the Swedish routine” in the author’s opinion.
I read the article with great interest and found lots of positive information in these approaches, but
I couldn’t share the author’s optimistic conclusion about returning 15 individuals who went through “Swedish” treatment to “their normal work schedules, training successfully without further Achilles problem… and being free from serious trouble as long as they keep doing these exercises”. It would be wonderful to be able to solve such a serious problem in such a simple way, to tell nothing of 12 weeks of doing these exercise.
Without disputing the efficiency of any approach to solving the Achilles tendinitis problem, I want to make it clear that
it’ll never be really solved unless we address the main cause of the problem, and we’ll be back to this problem again and again, no matter how successful our treatment may be.
And the main reason is always the skill of movement, the skill of running, the running technique.
I didn’t do any specific research for this matter, but I did a lot of field work in running for many years and achieved good results just by changing the way of running of my students. Yes, Owen Anderson is right when he is describing that
calf muscles do not work concentrically and it is supported by science studies. But
it means at the same time that there is no push off action by the leg during support time, but
only rebounding from the ground, based on elastic component of muscles work.
In Pose Method this understanding was the cornestone of running technique development. No push off, no concentric muscle work, just a pull of the support foot from the ground, which fully integrates muscle coordination and
takes off the load from the Achilles Tendon. In my opinion,
the main reason of Achilles tendon overloading is deterioration of coordination of movement (running). This leads to destruction of neuro-muscular coordination and then to overloading of muscles and tendons.
So the solution to this problem in Pose Method lies in learning to run proper, through specific philosophy, concepts and drills to perform the specific action of pulling the foot from the ground on time.
You can find specific drills for pulling action in the book
“The Pose Method of Running”, chapter 24, pp.123-130. You also need to strengthen your hamstring for this matter (
“Hamstring and Hips Exercises” book, pp.10, ex.# 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12). In order to unload your feet you need to develop strong muscles in the hips area. I would highly recommend specific exercises for this from the same
“Hamstring and Hips Exercises” book, pp.19-26, #1 to 24 in progression.
The good news here is that you can continue running as long as you remember that you should stop immediately when you feel that your running technique deteriorates. As long as you run proper, your pain will be gradually reducing. This system never failed me during my long work in the running field.
Article by Dr. Nicholas Romanov
Composed by L. Romanov
