constant tendon injuries

xenogrant

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Hey, just wanted to get a second opinion from people who train in combat sports and possibly experienced a lot of recurrent injuries.

So 3 years ago I decided to whip myself into shape and got a muay thai membership, morning after 10th class i woke up with slight pain in left achilless tendon, which I ignored (big mistake) went to a pretty intense yoga class, and basically limped for 2 months, and did 4 months of eccentric heel drops for like 30-40 min total twice a day until the problem went away. Lucky me, since I've met a couple people who could never cure their Achilles tendon.

Knowing about my Achilles's heel, haha, i decided to take up running, building up to 15km runs over couple years, even running through winter once a week, just to keep my achilless strong.

Get rotator cuff injury in yoga class jumping into handstand, my mistake for overdoing it, but didn't hurt at the time but as with most tendon injuries it's the next day I felt the pain, buncha physio, a year later still feel slight pangs of it but can do pretty much anything.

Took up Krav about a year ago, 4-5 classes a week, 15 min warm up, 45 striking, which my body could handle better than muay thai, that's 45min warm up and 45 striking. I know people like to shit on krav, but the school i go to I like there's a mix of instructors so you get a lot of styles, and I gravitated away from self defense and more towards striking and sparring. Really liked striking classes (mostly western boxing, very little focus on kicks) long hand combos. After about a year of krav, ate a kick in the knee during light sparring (my fault went to check the kick too late so got caught in a weird moment place), which I made the mistake of ignoring, kept running, then did a squat during warm up and felt sharp pain, same mistake as achilless tendon, should've learned to take time off as soon as it happens. about 3 months of eccentric single legs squats on bad knee, i can fully lower myself to perpendicular almost pain free, huge improvement over when i could bend my knee maybe 45 degrees with sharp pain, another few months and it'll clear up i think.

So figured during time off I can do a bit of weightlifting and heavy bag work, throw a right cross that's a bit too hard and don't adjust my position due to bad knee, and hyperextend (my fault again) rookie mistake. Couple months off still have mild pain in tricep from hyperextension when I do a push day at the gym which i stopped doing, can do pull exercises fine, but avoiding pull ups until elbow is 100%.

So go back to sparring class in Krav, since my knee is almost good, everything's fine, no knee pain after class, didn't hypextend my elbow (taped it up to avoid being able to hyperextend it). Pretty happy I can train at a moderate pace and work around my injuries.

Wake up next day with mild achilless tendon pain on same side as I used to have 3 years ago, guessing from all the bursty movements during sparring. And it's just annoying to me since I could run 10 miles on it pain free, but taking a few months off seems to have made a problem i thought i cured for good come back.
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TLDR;
Sorry for long post, but I just don't know if my body is not cut out for athleticism, or if i don't have enough muscles to protect my tendons from over use injuries, and taking time off combat sports and focusing on weight training for maybe 6 months or so is something to consider? I'm 35, 6'3" 170lb, don't really care for muscle, and would rather spend the time on technique development, but the injuries are just killing my training. Am I too old for this or what do you guys think?

ps. take 1500mg epa/dha fish oil a day, good vitamin c, Glucosamine & Chondroitin, and alfalfa supplement all of which should help with tendon injuries but i still get hurt like a mofo. drink 2L of water a day.

pps. I feel like i've seen every doctor (advice of doing nothing, which current research into tendon injuries says that's teh worst thing you could do), have been using up all my physio benefits in work package for past 3 years, gone to osteopath, and gonna try kineseologist next.

any insight from injury prone people would be apreciated, i do realize a lot of the injuries are from overuse, but at the same time i don't notice them until a day after of going too hard, and then it's months and months of rehab.
 
I don't know the specific question you had, but I was thinking about a similar thing.

I am an injury-prone guy like you, and at one point, was pretty athletic. Played basketball regularly, football, etc. For the last I'd say ten years though, I haven't really done anything "athletic". I mean, I still keep myself in shape (lifting weights, sprinting, water) but I've basically not done any jumping, cutting, diving, etc. that one would consider athletic. And while *not* doing those things have kept me from spraining ankles, knees, etc. I wonder if that inactivity has also made me more brittle in some ways, when it comes to my body constitution.

I ask because I've also been thinking of taking up BJJ (posted a thread recently). My concern was hurting myself (as an injury-prone guy... plus have neck pain, bad knees, back goes out from time-to-time). It is a legitimate concern. However... I wonder if there is an aspect of toughening your body up (through athletic activities like rolling, bending, shooting) that also work to make you less brittle.

Basically at my age (40s), I'm looking for activities that help me prolong my youth and vitality.
 
The best injury preventative exercise? Dr. Edythe Heus at Revolution in Motion. In NYC and I believe in California. What will you gain from her methods? Athleticism, mobility, elasticity (important for tendons), stronger core and lengthening of the spine. It's safe and effective in just a minimal amount of time.

As we get older, it's important to warm up and exercise properly for your body. Very few things will do what I said above.

Life, stress, work and age take their toll eventually. This can help keep you in the game.
 
The best injury preventative exercise? Dr. Edythe Heus at Revolution in Motion. In NYC and I believe in California. What will you gain from her methods? Athleticism, mobility, elasticity (important for tendons), stronger core and lengthening of the spine. It's safe and effective in just a minimal amount of time.

As we get older, it's important to warm up and exercise properly for your body. Very few things will do what I said above.

Life, stress, work and age take their toll eventually. This can help keep you in the game.

Thanks for the suggestion. I can't find any info that she is in the LA area. In any case, is she of the Marinovich/Curson/etc. school of thought? Because IIRC, Marinovich is in the LA area (or OC). And Curson is certainly.

*Nevermind: She's in Agoura... Not that that helps--Agoura is way far.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion. I can't find any info that she is in the LA area. In any case, is she of the Marinovich/Curson/etc. school of thought? Because IIRC, Marinovich is in the LA area (or OC). And Curson is certainly.

*Nevermind: She's in Agoura... Not that that helps--Agoura is way far.
She is the originator and the one who introduced Marinovich to the ball work and balance work in the 90's. I was fortunate to meet her and learn her basic routines. It's fantastic for keeping your body working the way it should athletically.

Are you in the LA area? I would call her. She may have trainers in your area to refer you to.
 
I've found so far that warm ups are essential and knowing when to step back from the brink. Unfortunately it takes a few tendon injuries to know what it feels like when it's in trouble.

This is a topic I want to know more on. Longevity of my peak has become main interest
 
I've found so far that warm ups are essential and knowing when to step back from the brink. Unfortunately it takes a few tendon injuries to know what it feels like when it's in trouble.

This is a topic I want to know more on. Longevity of my peak has become main interest
I'm on my fourth or fifth tendon injury and it just feels like there's not much in terms of options out there. It's the same circle, doctor says to do nothing for a few weeks and take anti inflamatories, which is bad advice, physio gives me some exercises, and then do acupuncture and massage and tell me to come back every week, which is laughable since recovery time is like 3-6 months, massage is good for loosening up tight muscles from all the physio etc, but i've learned to do a lot of self massage with lacrose ball and foam roller. Osteopath i've tried lately and they're good for body balance adjustment so you're not leaning over to one side more than the other etc. Gonna try ART massage next to break up scar tissue. But is there anything out there that people find useful. Is revolutin in motion basically yoga/pilates? gonna look that up, but i'm in toronto.
 
I'm on my fourth or fifth tendon injury and it just feels like there's not much in terms of options out there. It's the same circle, doctor says to do nothing for a few weeks and take anti inflamatories, which is bad advice, physio gives me some exercises, and then do acupuncture and massage and tell me to come back every week, which is laughable since recovery time is like 3-6 months, massage is good for loosening up tight muscles from all the physio etc, but i've learned to do a lot of self massage with lacrose ball and foam roller. Osteopath i've tried lately and they're good for body balance adjustment so you're not leaning over to one side more than the other etc. Gonna try ART massage next to break up scar tissue. But is there anything out there that people find useful. Is revolutin in motion basically yoga/pilates? gonna look that up, but i'm in toronto.
It is like yoga and pilates with light weight utilized to enhance a stretch, mobility or bounce. It increased your body elasticity for athletics. Basically the rebound effect.
 
I got rid of my elbow/biceps tendonitis with red light. It was getting worse over the span of a few months, even when doing rehab, until I started using my red light for 3-5 minutes twice per day. The tendonitis was gone after just a month rehab and red light application. My light broadcasts in the 600-700nm range (it's not a laser, so the wavelength is more variable than a laser). This is the light I bought, and I know a few other people who have used the same light with some effectiveness (one guy for psoraisis and another gal for hashimoto's thyroiditis): https://redlightman.com/product/red-light-device/

It's surprisingly well researched in both animal models and in humans. Here's a few studies if you're interested in reading about it.

http://bmcmusculoskeletdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2474-9-75
http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/36/5/881.short
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10103-011-0925-y
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/pho.2005.23.470
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/40/1/76.short

I think my next investment will be some kind of laser diode that broadcasts around the 900nm range, but I won't be throwing any money down on that for a while.
 
I expect stem cell therapy will become the go to.
 
ordered a tendlite, thanks for the tip, since that red light lamp was sold out, will post results a lot of people seem to post about improvements to tendons and chronic pain so feeling optimistic. Keep the ideas coming.
Amazon product ASIN B004QECAU4
 
stretch, follow the basic recovery methods that are always talked about here (ice, heat, myofacial release, etc), ease up on the intensity. The body will slowly adapt to the rigors of exercise / training, but it must be increased slowly. Large increases in intensity or volume are a surefire way to injure ones self.
 
Also forgot to mention, adding in strength training will also help reduce the incidence of injury.
 
I got rid of my elbow/biceps tendonitis with red light. It was getting worse over the span of a few months, even when doing rehab, until I started using my red light for 3-5 minutes twice per day. The tendonitis was gone after just a month rehab and red light application. My light broadcasts in the 600-700nm range (it's not a laser, so the wavelength is more variable than a laser). This is the light I bought, and I know a few other people who have used the same light with some effectiveness (one guy for psoraisis and another gal for hashimoto's thyroiditis): https://redlightman.com/product/red-light-device/

It's surprisingly well researched in both animal models and in humans. Here's a few studies if you're interested in reading about it.

http://bmcmusculoskeletdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2474-9-75
http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/36/5/881.short
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10103-011-0925-y
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/pho.2005.23.470
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/40/1/76.short

I think my next investment will be some kind of laser diode that broadcasts around the 900nm range, but I won't be throwing any money down on that for a while.
holy shit, im going to check that out thanks .sounds almost as good as that babe in your avatar scratch that better than that babe in your avatar .once i get my body back to normal ill get all the whores i want, the job i want..i want to go one day without anti inflamatories one month without roids one hour without rubbing all kind of anti inflamatory cremes on my body i want to workout to get healthy not having to keep working out to rehab myself
 
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some areas of the body cannot be stretched like the side abs
Actually you can stretch the sides of your body. And you can do it laying sideways and leaning over a swiss ball. Some people have a spine that tends to collapse on one side and get a rib out of place. Stretching and lengthening that side of the body can be achieved by something like that.
 
Strength training in the right parameters does reduce injury as it increases soft tissue strength around joints. And your "side abs" are called obliques and can be stretched and soft tissue released also, even by oneself...ffs.

To the OP
Resting and easing off helps, you have the eccentrics which is more than what most people learn. Light therapy can work, though i havent personally used anything other than lasers during treatment for others.
ART is just named patented soft tissue release. It makes them more money to say ART or graston technique and ppl pay lots. That isnt to say it doesnt work.

Tendon/itis issues are generally overuse and usually need time off unfortunately, in conjunction with other methods, some of which you are doing or have done.
Good warm ups and altering technique and easing back into things helps. I prevented tendinitis in my achilles that way along with a lacrosse ball.
 
Yeah feeling an onset of achiless let me catch it early, took a week off then started doing heel drops for a bit, got a 4 hour kinfe defense seminar coming up I don't want to skip, but will probably take a month or two after and hammer out eccentric heel drops twice a day to make sure my achiless can handle loads on it again after. I went to a kineseologist who also said strength training can help, since if you throw a punch, and then snap it back if you don't have a lot of muscle in bicep tricep and forearm your tendon gets put under a lot more load. Unfortuantely elbow tendinitis is the only injury that's not really going away. Even though i do forearm stretches and massage tricep and forearm with The Stick, and a lacrose ball to loosen it up.

Massage therapist admitted getting massages is expensive and a bit of a waste of money for a specific injury. And suggested getting ArmAid arm massage tool. Don't know why it doesn't let me put in links
http://www.armaid.com/page/853-3029/armaidhome

Eccentric loading program has helped me with my knee pain too almost 80% recovered. Although it's a lot of work doing it every night for months, but my elbow is the one part of the body I can't find a good program to do tendon exercises on.
 

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