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 that 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.
Dear mr. Romanov,
My name is Brandon and I am a soph. in highschool and i play football. Last night I was on google video and i was searching for ways to improve sprinting technique and to get faster, I found some of your video's and I was very interested by the POSE method. It seems really hard to master but I am willing to commit to it. I was just wandering how I will be knowing if I am doing the technique right? How will i moniter my progression? I have been searching for a long time on ways to run faster but none of the methods worked. I hope the POSE method will work for me. It all makes sense to me but i need some help applying the information to my running.
Thank you for reading my post. If you have the chance could you give me some words of wisdom or help me out with the things im confusied with?
Brandon K.
Dublin, OH
Hi Vicente,
Dr.Romanov is aware of trigger point therapy, quite a few people on our message boards have mentioned positive results of that type of therapy also.
Dr.Romanov's teachings, training and rehabilitation philosophy goes well beyond trigger point therapy.
We post his new articles on various topics here weekly, every Tuesday. Please check back often to read more of Dr.Romanov's recommendations.
During two years I had achilles tendinitis four times in the right tendon and twice in the left tendon. I tried a podologist doctor, physiotherapy twice, orthotics and accupunture. Nothing solved the problem, when the pain dissapeared after some time I would start training, very slowly and each time the problems would come back faster.
A friend of mine had a problem that was solved in three sessions and so he recommended to me a phisiatrist doctor speciallised in trigger point theraphy. After three months of treatment, I thing I had the record of 25 trigger points (problems) in the right gastrocnemus and soleus and 20 in the left gastrocnemus and soleus I was cured (that was last January). The problems were in the muscles and created pain downstream at the tendons. I have been training hard with no problems since then and go to the doctor every one or two months for him to check. I really recomend you take a look at this type of treatment. I also started doing much more stretching and strengh training than before.
Cheers, Vicente
Dear Randy,
it would be better if you come to the clinic and we correct your running technique. I had very positive results with this kind of problem. Physical load on your body during the clinic will be moderate, it'll not make your pain worse than before, but the corrections we do could possibly reduce your pain.
Dr.Romanov
Dr Romanov : I have just experienced achilles tendonitis for the first time ever (52 yo)..... I have signed up for April 15 South Beach Clinic...
should I heal first and do a later clinic, or still come?
To Mathew Kramer:
Our on-line program will have the different features as: strength conditioning, recovery, injury prevention and recovery exercise, flexibility development, elasticity and coordination. We are planning to include general fitness program as well, with the basic education in diet, mental and psycho-emotional training.
Dr.Romanov
dear Mathew,
I would like to confirm your thoughts that you are moving in a right direction. A proper technique means very simple thing - you are interacting with nature without fighting with it. So, in return you'll get a pleasure of running.
My best regards, and sorry for being late with my reply,
Dr.Romanov
I'm a mess... I ran H.S. college and into my 30's.. I ran everything from 400 to 10k but due to a recurring achilles injury from college, I took up bike racing for 10 years but the 15 to 25 hours a week training took its toll...
I'm 49 now and 16 months ago I had surgury for torn ACL in rt. Knee due to volleyball injury.
I have very weak hams due to many pulls in college...
I'd like to get back to running but the ACL repair and Right achilles injuries...
Do you think the Pose method might be a hope for me to get back running (slowly)?
Thanks
Don Learned
Dr.Romanov is in MX at the Triathlon Clinic at the moment, so I took the liberty of replying to your question.
Yes our Online Training Program will have that feature and many others. It will change as you change and progress, it will develop according to your results and goals.
Thank you, Dr.Romanov. I will continue, especially now that I'm seeing the results, nothing is more convincing then almost immediate results.
I have a question about your Online Training Program that's coming out. Will it have exercises as part of the training process? I mean, let's say I sign up for a monthly program, and then during training I experience certain pains, or discomforts or something of that sort. Will the program give me an option of typing that info in and getting specific instructions and exercises to correct it. Will that feature be implemented?
Thank you,
Mathew Kramer
Dear Matthew,
Yes, it is so simple, but probably the simplisity is a problem by itself. People believe in pills, surgeries, orthotics, cushioning shoes, etc., but not in Nature and themselves as a part of Nature. There are no magic pills in Nature, but only understanding it and working with it, not against it. Keep working on your running skills and you will get your own proof of this overtime.
Dr.Romanov
I've been quietly reading the posts on the Pose Forum on this website, and I also check out the links that people post there which have been somewhat helpful to me in finding certain solutions to at least some of my problems. Your teachings however, Dr.Romanov, make a lot of sense and seem to actually have very simple and valid reasoning and explanations.
For a moment here I had a "revelation" but would like to confirm before I get too happy. I've had so many problems during my "running" life that I don't even want to bother mentioning, let's just say, everything that's been mentioned on the forum - I had it (no serious surgeries however). I love to run. I want to continue to do so. I've been trying to run Pose for 6 months now. I think I'm doing it ok considering I've never attended a clinic and I don't have any pain while running now (the latter seem to really puzzle me sometimes).
Here's my revelation - are you saying that if I stick to a proper running technique I will not have any more problems? That's one. Two - if I have achilles problems now, by doing the exercises that you point out and by sticking to a proper technique I will be able to fix it all myself? The achilles pain had actually gone down already, I just don't want to get ahead of myself and say that it's due to my new running technique.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to have such a long post, I'm just a little puzzled right now by the fact that the answer to all my questions and problems could be so easy and it's right in front of me. I just don't understand that if that's the case how come it's not on the news, how come it's not a common knowledge. I just don't get it.
Ok, to make this short. Could you just please confirm my thoughts to me? It would make me a happy person if I'm correct. I just didn't think it was possible.
I don't know what else to say.
Thank you,
Mathew Kramer
LA
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