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Tendonitis is inflammation of your tendon. Tendons are the connective tissue which bind your muscles to your bones, and often become inflamed through repetitive movement and feels worse whenever you try to move the affected area.

 

Think of it like a subscription to your favourite TV or streaming service:

 

You get a free trial for a while (when you start training). When that runs out you need to start paying the subscription (doing the exercises we give you in this blog). If you don’t, you get static: annoying, loud, incoherent fuzz (tendonitis). Every time you turn your device on to watch your favourite programs you just get static and it drives you nuts - you can’t think about anything else apart from how annoying it is and all you want to do is watch your shows… but until you pay your subscription, that static isn’t going to go away… and it will keep coming back.

 

Tendonitis can range from an annoying tingle, a weird burning sensation, right up to completely immobilising a joint. Tendons are tough, flexible, fibrous bands of tissue which can be small bands (your smallest tendon is only 1.25mm in your ear!), or large cords (your Achilles is the largest, averaging 15cm long!), and when they become inflamed they like to let you know with style, a loud annoying “F**K OFF” style.
 

You often get tendonitis because you don’t move your joints like joints. You only do the stuff you like to do, and/or never think about your body as a machine that must function well first before you can make it do crazy things.

 

I mentioned that tendonitis is caused by repetition, overuse of a certain movement pattern, but it’s not just the act of repeating a certain movement – every athlete deliberately puts themselves through repetition when they’re honing and refining their specific skills, yet they don’t all come down with tendonitis every other day. Repetition is dangerous when it is not countered with “opposite” movements.

 

For example, sitting at a keyboard all day with your wrists extended, then going to lift weights with your wrists in extension, plus only stretching your wrists in extension – you never spend time with your wrists in flexion! This is a massive cause of elbow/forearm/wrist tendonitis. The constant strain on the “extensors” without any relief from the “flexors”. 

 

Another common cause is simply “too much too soon”. Jumping straight into heavy lifting programs, or intense, long games of racket sports, etc. without doing the years of athletic training and muscle/joint strengthening first with higher rep ranges/lower intensity work.

 

Now we can see that the “causes” are easily preventable/treatable without having to give up doing what you love.

 

A lot of people with tendonitis are told to do less, I say, do more: you need to start doing the movements you’re missing.

 

It’s called balance!

 

Today we’re going to give you exercises to combat three major types of tendonitis:

·        Wrist/Forearm/Elbow

·        Shoulder

·        Patellar/Achilles

 

Even if you don’t have a problem in these areas, they’re good exercises to include in your training as a preventative measure. Think like paying that subscription service, you don’t want to end up being cut off someday! Do the stuff that that keeps your joints happy now, rather than waiting until there’s a problem!

 

Having full range in your wrists through both flexion and extension is extremely important for the health of your wrists, forearms and elbows.

 

It is crazy how many times I have seen people with tennis or golfers’ elbow that have never stretched their wrists both ways, or even knowing it’s something you’re supposed to do. Your elbows are hinges: if one side of your forearm is always being lengthened and the other side is always shortened and you never balance this out it puts a lot of pressure on that hinge and it will begin to get pissed off! If you use your wrists a lot, they’ll get pissed off quickly.

 

On all fours:

·        Place your palms on the floor (extension) and lean your shoulders over your fingers for a few reps

·        Keep changing the orientation of your fingertips, and repeat (e.g. fingertips facing away from each other and lean side to side)

·        Then, place the backs of your hands on the floor (flexion) and lean your shoulders over your fingers for a few reps.

·        Keep changing the orientation of your fingertips, and repeat

·        Then, play about! Move your wrists in all directions you can think of! Make circles, open and close your hands in weird positions, move them sideways – anything!

 

It is not a dangerous to put weight on your wrists in flexion, but it will generally take time to build up tolerance in that position as it can feel quite unusual at first.

 

I recommend trying to work on your wrists every day. They’re such a small joint but get such a beating! We’re constantly tightening up our flexors by our constant use of keyboards and phones. Think about how much time you spend with your wrists in extension rather than flexion! 

 

When you limit your movement like this, you lose your “wiggle room” and the slightest thing can cause your wrists or elbows to freak out because they feel WEAK.

 

 

Any type of rotation is super beneficial for your shoulders. They’re ball & socket joints and are designed to have a massive range of motion… but unfortunately, we rarely use it all. This leads to overuse in the few positions we do use. 

 

A great place to start is with resistance band shoulder dislocates:

·        Hold a light band at about shoulder width

·        Pull it apart to the width you need to take your shoulders through full ROM.

·        Keep your elbows straight and your shoulders active as you move the band in front of you, then behind, in a semi-circle over your head.

·        When the band is in front of you, press your hands back behind your hips to engage your lats

·        When it’s behind you, pull your hands in front of your hips to engage the pecs

 

Aim for 3 sets of 20, depending on how your shoulders are feeling.

 

Using a band instead of a stick/dowel gives you light resistance in multiple directions because you’re keeping constant tension on the band. This is what your shoulders want to do, rather than go from being hunched over all day to bench pressing to death…

 

If your shoulders feel clunky or your pecs/biceps feel tight then this is a massive sign of the cause of your inflammation.

 

If you find moving your shoulders is too painful, then for now try rotating your shoulders without a band, just as much as you can. Stimulating blood flow to the areas will help repair – tendons have a far lower blood supply than muscles, meaning their recovery takes longer.

 

If you can do it but it’s uncomfortable, try smaller sets of 5-10 reps and see how you feel the day after. If it feels aggravated it, then ditch the band for now and try just rotating your shoulders, but if it’s feeling better add a few more reps in the next time you try. 

 

When you’re over your spell of tendonitis, keep this movement a regular part of either a morning movement routine or gym warmups. I’m fond of super-setting it with other exercises and it helps your recovery after training sessions too!

 

Try playing around with various hand positions, speeds, even band thicknesses! You can’t do enough of this exercise.

 

 

One of the BIGGEST causes of patellar tendonitis, achilles issues and even plantar fasciitis is that people don’t spend any time developing or challenging their balance. When you put your body through a strength cycle or an endurance event, you’re asking a lot from it, and if it lacks basic stability of course it’s going to give you issues!

 

Think about this: if you struggle to stand on one leg at a time for 60 seconds without wobbling/ falling over, would it really make sense to train for a marathon that is 42 195 kilometres!? Unless you can finish it under 60 seconds, some of your stabilising muscles won’t be able to take that amount of punishment. And guess what? When you run in to tendonitis or plantar fasciitis (pun intended) the most common advice is to rest.

 

So, what shall we do instead?

 

First: master the single leg balance.

·        Practice standing on one leg! Anywhere, anytime, for as long as you can. You want a comfortable 60 seconds.

·        If you can do 60s staying still, aim for 60s while moving your arms and other leg around like a mad thing

 

If you can do that too, great! But the gains don’t stop there!

 

Once you can balance on one leg while deliberately wobbling yourself, you’ve got all you can out of that drill. You’re not challenging yourself enough to keep making progress – the same way you wouldn’t squat with the same weight every session, you just wouldn’t get any stronger. We need to increase the difficulty to keep building stability, making your ankles/knees/hips work harder to give that extra “wiggle room” for pushing yourself in your training.

 

We do that by limiting the amount of foot you’re balancing on!

·        Stand on something using only the ball of your foot, e.g. on bumper plate, step/stair, fireplace, heavy book etc. making sure you can dip your heel below your toes.

·        Aim for 60 seconds again – this will now be much wobblier and much more challenging!

 

For a full workout I challenge you to build up to:

·        1 minute left leg

·        1 minute right leg

·        1 minute both legs

 

Make sure you keep trying no matter how much you fall. It may seem impossible at first, but you just get back on and try again, you WILL get better the more often you practice it. Note down how long you stay balanced before you fall or need to rest and try to increase that number every time!

 

This will strengthen your feet, ankles, knees, hips, glutes & core while teaching them how to work together (kind of important, and something you don’t get from the leg extension machine). How awesome is that!? You’ll notice your symptoms ease, your recovery better and you’ll just feel connected properly.

 

I would also like to point out that you can do that drill right now, like you could actually start it today... like... now...

 

 

If you’re in a really bad place with your tendonitis and genuinely aren’t ready to move then don’t, but the second you start feeling better, implement these drills. Once you reach a 5 out of 10 on a pain scale then try them and see how you feel after the next day. By getting your joints moving the right way, you may be able to shorten your recovery time to 3 weeks instead of 6 weeks.

 

Just listen to your body. If the next day you feel like you’re making it worse then back off a little bit – but don’t give up completely! Come back to it when the pain has eased.

 

Everything in this blog is stuff that you should want to be able to do easily, it will just take practice!

 

You know all those people that never get injured and do crazy stuff all the time? They never struggle with this stuff. Their body is well connected and balanced. You’ll probably find they’ve had an active childhood with lots of physical variety. The rest of us mere mortals though? Who picked up a love of training later in life? We have to put the work in.

 

Trust me though, it is worth it - the way I feel now after training sessions is a million times better than the way I used to feel. I just thought it was DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) but in reality, I had crap flexibility, no stability, and my body was trying to tell me that the only way it can: PAIN.

 

It’s up to YOU to give your body the foundation it needs

 

And did I mention you can go and try that stair balance drill right now?

If you want to take these concepts further, then check out the Simplistic Mobility Method, or, to build strength while keeping your joints happy have a look at End Range Training.