Achilles heel injury (Read 571 times)

Hi all. Brand new to forum. I have a minor achilles heel pull following a 5 mile run. I'm kicking myself for not streching properly before I ran. Last time I did this was playing basketball a few years ago and I just cut back on activities for a few weeks. It's sort of sore, but not too bad. What's the best way to rehab this sort of thing? Thanks.

I had a pretty severe Achilles Tendinitis almost two years ago and it sidelined me for three months. What follows is the program my doctor gave me to follow until the tendon healed and then what I have seen in articles that actually cite studies as opposed to just wing it based on the author's experience. For now I would just stop running on it until it feels better. While it is healing you should also ice it twice a day for 15 minutes. Even after the tendon feels better keep icing it for at least a few weeks, if not a couple of months. Taking ibuprofen twice a day for about a week will also help. Depending on how bad it feels you should or should not start doing stretches. If you can barely walk, forget stretching. If it just annoying -- stretch. In the end I wound up with a program of three stretches to do twice a day. Go to The Injured Runner for two of them. In addition you should also do negative heal lifts. The negative heal lifts are the only stretch that studies have found will prevent a recurrence so I strongly recommend doing them. Find a stair. Place your foot on it with your forefoot on the step and your heals off in the air. Use BOTH legs to lift up. Then use just one to come down with. Do NOT overstretch the tendon with this. Just go down a little past the step. Repeat three times with each leg. Start with something like 5 drops in each repetition. Eventually, you should be able to work your way up to 20. I disagree with sdewan on when you should strech. My advice would be to avoid streching right after runs. Your tendon is pretty sensitive then and you are more likely to reinjure it than do it any good just then. Also, the evidence that streching right before a run prevents an injury like this is pretty thin. No evidence it hurts, just no evidence it does much good. Given that I generally do my streches in the morning when I wake up and just before I go to bed. Sometimes the morning streches are right before a run, sometimes not. I would just not worry about it. Between the stretches on The Injured Runner and the negative heal lifts I have not had any recurrences. Best of luck. The good news is this is an injury that typically heals completely.