A very common injury that causes a long absence from sport is tendinopathy, very common conditions of this is Patella tendinpathy (Runners or Jumpers knee) and Achilles tendinopathy. As the the heading trys to explain that rest does not do much in the recovery or management of tendinopathy.
Other forms of management that has showed not to be very effective is anti-inflammatory medication. It was shown that the tendon would go through more structural degenerative changes with minimal presence of inflammatory cells (Coombes et al., 2010). This was so significant that term "tendinitis" has been replaced with "tendinopathy".
So what exactly happens to the tendon? The repetitive load of sport or exercise on the tendon exceeds, the loading capacity of the tendon. This causes the breakdown of the collagen fibers in the tendon at a faster rate that the tendon can repair. Which causes the
overuse of the tendon over time.
Progressive tendon-loading exercise therapy has been shown to produce great results in the treatment of tendinopathy. This process consists of 4 stages: Isometric exercises, Isotonic exercises, energy storage exercises and sports specific exercises. Once the athlete gets to the 4th stage and able to complete exercises with an acceptable level of <3 out 0f 10 on the Visual analog scale (VAS), they can return to sport (Breda et al., 2022).
The rehabilitation of the tendon is not over when there is no longer pain, however continued conditioning of the tendon is required to ensure that the repetitive use of the tendon does not cause it to exceed the tendons loading capacity.
Happy rehabbing guys ;-)
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