Are you limited in your ability to stay active? You are fearful you are going to have to slow down? You are doing massage, chiropractor, physical therapy, drugs, acupuncture and you are still not able to get back to being active?
Achilles Tendonitis can be frustrating, but it does not have to be… People are just not treating this injury correctly.
So you try the massage to help the tightness that has happened in the calf? You feel better, but you still can not get back to your activities because the pain returns quickly.
You go to a PT and maybe they give you easy exercises or do modalities to the tendon, but the same thing happens. There is no education and guidance on what to expect or when you are pushing too little or too hard. Still frustrated.
You try chiropractor and acupuncture and still get the same results.
So then you go to a doctor to figure out what else to do and they either want to give you medications (DO NOT DO INJECTIONS INTO YOUR ACHILLES TENDON- as this is a sure way to rupture that tendon), or worse they say we just need to have surgery.
Why does all this not work?? Well it is because the healthcare practitioners are not loading the structure correctly. The Achilles is a loading structure. It is how you get the sprint into your step. Just like a basketball bounding on the ground. The ball can spring and bounce back. That is what a normal health Achilles does. But when you have a injury in the Achilles, it is like having deflated ball. You can put a lot of force into bouncing the ball, but nothing happens, except in your Achilles, it hurts when you try to do that!
So what do you do? You have to gradually load the structure. You have to load it enough to make changes, but not too much to produce inflammation and irritation. I know, that sounds complicated. But it is not. Each person coming in with this injury is at a little different level, so an through evaluation will help to determine where you need to start and then you gradually increase the load onto the structure all the way up to doing ballistic and dynamic strengthening.
Here is the thing. This is not an injury unless there is a complete rupture to have surgery. All the surgery does is force you to gradually load the structure with exercises. It just takes you double the time to return to activities and you lower leg never comes back as strong. You will be able to do everything you want to do, the size of the leg will be smaller.
So if you are having a similar problem or you know someone who this story will resonate with them, forward this blog post to them.
At mPower Physical Therapy in Dallas we have several options that might help you. You can Sign up HERE for our FREE DISCOVERY VISIT to sit down and talk to one of our experts about what you have tried and want what you want to get back to doing so we can share how we can help.
OR you can CLICK HERE to just Talk to one of our hysical Therapist for FREE. Either way we can start a conversation and talk more about what is going on with you.
