How to protect Achilles?

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Yesterday when I was practicing I "felt" something when i was lunging forward against opponent's drop short. I"m not injured, nothing happened, but I am approaching 30 and I never "felt" something on my Achilles before in the past. I feel like If i do that few hundreds of time in the future, it would eventually snap my tendon. So any stretches and exercise to prevent that from happening?
 
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Make sure it is not injured and you have full range of motion pain free.

Slowly build up to training your calves 2-4 times per week with progressively heavier resistance. Something like 2-4 hard sets per session with different rep ranges on different days (session one: 6-10 reps, session two: 10-15 reps, etc.). Control the eccentric and get a nice loaded stretch. No bouncing.

Take deload periods every 4-6 weeks to allow for active rest and recovery of the tendon.

Eat enough protein (at least 0.72 grams per pound of body weight daily), from a variety of high quality whole food sources (meat, dairy, eggs, fish, etc.) Also include more gelatinous cuts of meat from time to time to pick up some of those spare amino acids that tend to be lacking in Western diets.

Getting your calf muscle stronger through resistance training in this way and providing the raw building materials it needs through your diet will also increase the strength of your tendon and make you more resistant to injury. Don't do to much too quickly. Build up slowly. Calves can get VERY sore if you overdo it!
 
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Regular stretching of the calf and flexabilty in general of the ankle and knees etc..... Using a foam roller can help as well. I do a fair bit of martial arts and always make sure I do a good warm up and stretch before and warmdown after.
 
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I was doing single calf raise, focusing on loading on my big toe. It is one of the things that helped me cop with having flat feet / knee related issue.

The other week, I found myself (over) doing it quite a bit. One morning when I was stretching whilst sitting down, working in front of a computer, I felt a sharp needle :(

I had only played once since then, and its taking 3-4 weeks to recover. Until now, I am still afraid to play. Having hot bath for the feet everyday.... hoping it will help.

I welcome any suggestion
 
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Hi Joo, any suggestions for people who may have slightly teared/scared the Achilles tendon / the nearby area?

I am feeling needles at the ankle. It has been 3/4 weeks since I first felt the sharp needle. I was sat down, and just stretching my leg when it happened. Felt like tight calf muscle contributed to it.:(

Make sure it is not injured and you have full range of motion pain free.

Slowly build up to training your calves 2-4 times per week with progressively heavier resistance. Something like 2-4 hard sets per session with different rep ranges on different days (session one: 6-10 reps, session two: 10-15 reps, etc.). Control the eccentric and get a nice loaded stretch. No bouncing.

Take deload periods every 4-6 weeks to allow for active rest and recovery of the tendon.

Eat enough protein (at least 0.72 grams per pound of body weight daily), from a variety of high quality whole food sources (meat, dairy, eggs, fish, etc.) Also include more gelatinous cuts of meat from time to time to pick up some of those spare amino acids that tend to be lacking in Western diets.

Getting your calf muscle stronger through resistance training in this way and providing the raw building materials it needs through your diet will also increase the strength of your tendon and make you more resistant to injury. Don't do to much too quickly. Build up slowly. Calves can get VERY sore if you overdo it!
 
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Use it till it breaks. Then get a new one.
 
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Achilles tendon is pretty strong. General strengthening and stretching is useful in general. But if you were able to apply enough force to really damage your Achilles tendon in a single thrust force, like lunging forward for a ball, it would be a rare event rather than something that happens all the time. The actually stuff you do while you play would help make the tendon stronger.

General stretches that cause the ankle to flex and stretch the muscles of the lower leg (Gastrocnemius and Soleus), as long as you are strengthening the lower leg as well, would help for general mobility of the ankle which would help make it a little harder to injure the Achilles tendon.
 
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I am a strong believer in dynamic stretching... which is basicly doing lower intensity of the same things you do in sport to warm up and loosen muscles to prepare them for a load.

Sometimes, we move a little off time in a moment when we are not quite prepared and we put stress on a tiny part of a muscle or tendon... and often this is next to a nerve. This also happens when for some reason we are not coordinated with the right muscles in sequence to do something. It can happen.We often luck out and it is just a minor grade one pull or tear of a tiny strand near a nerve that heals fast enough.

I hear your concern and down the road, when performing something more explosive than just a tiny step forward you can rip stuff when the other muscles involve are not sequenced. Keeping up with hydration and mineralization helps the little electric signals stay in order.
 
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Hi Joo, any suggestions for people who may have slightly teared/scared the Achilles tendon / the nearby area?

I am feeling needles at the ankle. It has been 3/4 weeks since I first felt the sharp needle. I was sat down, and just stretching my leg when it happened. Felt like tight calf muscle contributed to it.:(

Once someone is injured, I don't feel comfortable giving advice outside of "go see a professional." That said, Der Etche brings up a great point about the importance of warming up and using dynamic stretches.

So at the very least make sure you warm up before any activity.

I happen to be working on a book at the moment (see sig) that has an entire chapter on injury prevention and how to make your body more resilient. Stay tuned!
 
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I've been playing for more than 2 decades now and I'm thankful that I don't have any problems with my achilles. With experience and proper coaching, I was able to make a habit of stretching and warming up my body before matches. I'm older now (almost 33), so I try to give my body the rest it needs when I have to because pain/soreness doesn't go away as fast as it was anymore.

If you feel pain, I think you should get it checked. I wouldn't take a risk because that would just keep me off the table longer when it's actually injured. I hope all is well.
 
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Yesterday when I was practicing I "felt" something when i was lunging forward against opponent's drop short. I"m not injured, nothing happened, but I am approaching 30 and I never "felt" something on my Achilles before in the past. I feel like If i do that few hundreds of time in the future, it would eventually snap my tendon. So any stretches and exercise to prevent that from happening?

I just wanted to highlight one phrase in scrubplayer's post. He is NOT INJURED. :)

No need for a doctor if not injured. It is hard to hurt that tendon to the extent you were describing. Strengthening the lower leg will make the calf muscles stronger. Walking, running, jumping, TT footwork, any footwork training drills, regular playing of TT, especially at the level you play at scrubplayer, will continue to keep strengthening that tendon. If it was mildly injured, you should know, soft tissue grows stronger fastest when some damage has occurred.

So the incident you described, which made you think and feel, but did not cause injury, that in itself would make the tendon grow stronger provided it has enough time to recover before the same action is done to the tendon. Tendons take longer for your body to repair than muscles.

By the way, what I said about soft tissue is true for bone as well. Just like soft tissue, bone grows stronger in direct relation to how it is stressed which is why, when someone in their 40s or 50s or older starts having OsteoPenia (precursor to OsteoPorosis) they are told to do Weight Bearing exercises. After a bone is broken is actually when it will grow fastest and strongest. The area where a broken bone grew back together is almost always stronger than the bone was before the break.

Our bodies grow stronger in direct response to how they are stressed. If you did that action once every three months, to only one of your Achilles tendons, that tendon would end up dramatically thicker and stronger over the course of two-three years than the other. Just like, if you play TT a lot and you hold up both arms and compare them, most likely your dominant hand arm (the arm you hold your racket in) will be larger than the other arm. :)

Don't worry about this. Just don't do it again for another 2-4 months. If you did it once or twice a week for 6-8 months, you would end up with a repetitive stress injury to your Achilles that would be almost as painful as if you had a tear (not severed but torn). [Severed would be a complete cut of a tendon in two separate pieces; a tear would be part of the tendon getting a cut but not all the way through; A tear is much much much more likely than you severing that tendon, unless a sharp object like a knife, {or an arrow LOL} was involved.]

Likely you are strong enough that what you did should not matter. Just keep playing and show us new footage of you beating higher and higher level players.
 
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One thing I've found very useful over the years of recovering from various pulls and strains (mostly soccer related) is - if you have a slight tear/strain of anything along the backside of your foot/leg/butt area (Achilles, calf, hamstring included) - use the plantar fasciitis (PF) protocol. These tissues are all connected, and when you injure them, the healing (which primarily happens during rest/sleep) causes a shortening of the tissues, which puts you at greater risk of reinjuring the newly recovered tissue. With PF the typical chronic problem is that as you sleep your foot naturally relaxes and extends out, and the soft tissue at the bottom of your foot shortens in that extended position, so the first steps you take in the morning retears those fragile tissues. There is a PF brace you can get which holds your foot in a non-relaxed, <90 degree position, which you wear at night, to reduce the amount of shortening that occurs as it heals. For injuries to any of those tissues, using a PF brace at night helps immensely. Also, the PF protocol includes stretching the tissues several times a day as they heal.
 
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