Strengthening your tendons can prevent ergonomic injury and pain. Keeping load on the tendon helps this and without it tendon injuries can occur.
Common Tendon Ergonomic Injuries
Tendonitis
Tendonitis is an overuse injury causing inflammation in the tendon. The symptoms of tendonitis typically present at or around the injury site and typically include:
- A dull aching pain that can worsen with movement of the impacted tendon or joint.
- Tenderness or swelling around the impacted tendon.
- A rubbing or grating sensation when the tendon moves.
Tendinopathy
Like tendonitis, tendinopathy is a relatively common overuse injury. Tendinopathy refers to the chronic breakdown of collagen in the tendon. It has many of the same symptoms of tendonitis, but inflammation is less common in tendinopathy.
While conditions like tendonitis and tendinopathy cause a lot of pain, strengthening your tendons can prevent them.
Strengthening your Tendons
Tendons need load in order to repair themselves. A dense collagen matrix forms the tendon. This matrix allows load to travel through the tendon as efficiently as possible. This way that force can be distributed throughout all of the musculoskeletal structures the body can apply. That means that the brain/body relies on this loading to direct exactly where collagen should be laid down. At rest, the load’s absence prevents this direction.
Imagine the brain is a really overzealous concrete truck. When the tendon is being loaded, the brain perceives this as neatly laid out structures, with fluorescent spray paint saying exactly where it should pour said concrete. Easy. When no load comes through the tendon, the brain just shuts its eyes and sprays concrete everywhere like the first time you went paint balling. This overzealous concrete spray is referred to as dense irregular connective tissue.
Severe tendon or ligament strength training require a very specialized approach
Isometric contractions are a sustained contraction without movement. A near infinite number of options exist when it comes to selecting the isometrics that you need. Ultimately you should feel contraction within the muscle that is attached to the affected tendon. Generally you want load to travel through the tendon in a position that is as close to what your sport demands as possible.
Adding load to your tendons with isometric contractions helps fortify them again injuries. The strengthening will help prevent and alleviate pain from tendonitis and tendinopathy.
