Tendinitis

Tendinitis can occur in many places in the body, the most common areas being the ankle, knee, hamstring, and shoulder.  The term tendinitis is a bit of a misnomer since the suffix “-itis” implies inflammation, which is why we have gravitated more recently to the term tendinopathy.  We may see inflammation in the very early stages or during a flare-up in tendinopathy, but the true etiology of the injury is a weakening of the tissue.

Tendinopathies occur when the stress being put on a tendon exceeds the tendons capacity for handling that stress.  A simple example is a runner who develops achilles tendinopathy after suddenly increasing her mileage without the proper recovery between runs. The tendon was not ready for the sudden increase in stress being put on it and as a result became painful.

Managing tendinopathy usually requires a bit of rest in the short term to allow the sensitivity of the tissue to die down a little. Almost immediately strength training focused on the tendon needs to begin to build up what we call “load tolerance.”  Strengthening is often overlooked when someone is recovering from a tendon injury. The typical course goes like this:

Sam hurts a tendon in his knee while playing basketball. He takes 3 weeks off to let it heal. After 3 weeks it feels much better, and he begins playing again only to re-injury his knee.

Rest alone is not sufficient in rehabilitating a painful tendon.  Strategic strengthening is key.

Here at TruMotion Therapy we take this process very seriously.  Nobody wants to be away from their sport or activity a day longer than they need to. We work closely with our patients to find the right level of strength training to strengthen the tendon while still letting it heal. For those that want to continue to train our Alter-G Anti-Gravity Treadmill allows you to run or walk with less impact allowing you to stay in shape while running pain-free.  Laser therapy is another modality we use in conjunction with strengthening and soft tissue work to help speed up tissue healing.

If you live in or around the Charlotte area and are experiencing tendinitis that doesn’t seem to get better, click here to work with our team and begin finding relief.