Jump to content

Stupid Achilles Tendonitis, how to heal?


Recommended Posts

Hi all, I started training Muay Thai about a year and a half ago. I train anywhere from 1 to 3 hours most days, including the usual jumping rope, running a bit, skip knees, drills, sparring? Etc.
 

It’s all going well except for the fact that my Achilles are completely f**ked. They hurt especially during jumping rope, running, and skip knees which are all integral to training. It’s been since last December that I’ve had this off and on, but mostly on, and it’s driving me crazy. 
 

Has anyone had this issue and find a way to address it? I’m doing physical therapy, stretching, strengthening exercise and it’s still an issue. All suggestions are welcome! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does it hurt more down towards the heel or more up towards your calf?

I had pain around the area but more upwards towards the calf and my trainer, who also does physical therapy and whatnot, told me that its not actually the tendon that is the problem here but the calf muscles. He was absolutely right as my physiotherapist confirmed. My problem was that with my heavy frame (1,94m, big man build) and lack of training beforehand, this area wasn't used to the strain of getting up on my toes a lot and cramps up easily.

Some (painful) massaging and foam rolling helped but I have to really keep treating those muscles after every training or they'll start acting up again.

 

Both therapists (my trainer and my physiotherapist) told me that if its really the tendon, it usually hurts down towards the heel.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Hi

If there's any long lasting swelling on your Achilles and depending on your age you may be heading in to Tendinosis territory, common amongst runners after a lay off, negative calf raises worked for me. there's plenty about it on You tube, might save you a trip to a physio.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I get this in stretches when I'm doing a lot of jumping knees on the bag, also get it from skipping rope, etc. I get some relief from using a foam roller. I kneel on the ground with the tops of my feet against the floor, put the roller on the backs of my Achilles and then just sit on the top of the roller to create pressure. I don't move much, just leave the weight on it. I do this as a warm-up and cool-down. I also tape my ankle when the pain is a lot, as the compression seems to help.

My husband is a basketball fan and loves to freak out anytime my Achilles are hurting. He has a point. It's a very common injury and he says they can just snap if you don't warm them up properly or injure them too badly. That's pretty terrifying. I do try to get them massaged when they're very painful, which in Thailand isn't expensive but massage in other parts of the world can be pretty limiting due to cost. But mine go away and I forget that they were a problem until they become a problem again.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 10/21/2019 at 2:43 AM, Xestaro said:

Does it hurt more down towards the heel or more up towards your calf?

I had pain around the area but more upwards towards the calf and my trainer, who also does physical therapy and whatnot, told me that its not actually the tendon that is the problem here but the calf muscles. He was absolutely right as my physiotherapist confirmed. My problem was that with my heavy frame (1,94m, big man build) and lack of training beforehand, this area wasn't used to the strain of getting up on my toes a lot and cramps up easily.

Some (painful) massaging and foam rolling helped but I have to really keep treating those muscles after every training or they'll start acting up again.

 

Both therapists (my trainer and my physiotherapist) told me that if its really the tendon, it usually hurts down towards the heel.

I have NO idea why I never got notifications of responses her and I’m just seeing this now. Grrr. Anyhow, it down toward the heel. Strangely, the issue just sorta went away on its own. I changed the type of shoes I was wearing and all of a sudden the pain went away. Weird but I guess there is something to be said about supportive footwear. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/6/2019 at 9:16 AM, Sylvie von Duuglas-Ittu said:

I get this in stretches when I'm doing a lot of jumping knees on the bag, also get it from skipping rope, etc. I get some relief from using a foam roller. I kneel on the ground with the tops of my feet against the floor, put the roller on the backs of my Achilles and then just sit on the top of the roller to create pressure. I don't move much, just leave the weight on it. I do this as a warm-up and cool-down. I also tape my ankle when the pain is a lot, as the compression seems to help.

My husband is a basketball fan and loves to freak out anytime my Achilles are hurting. He has a point. It's a very common injury and he says they can just snap if you don't warm them up properly or injure them too badly. That's pretty terrifying. I do try to get them massaged when they're very painful, which in Thailand isn't expensive but massage in other parts of the world can be pretty limiting due to cost. But mine go away and I forget that they were a problem until they become a problem again.

For some reason, I never saw that anyone replied to my question. So weird. But I did start stretching much more, saw my physical therapist for some dry needling, and changed the shoes I was wearing and that seemed to get rid of the pain.
 

But I will start taping my ankles when I get back to more intense training. And the foam roller is always a good idea but one that I also always forget. Lol. I wish massages weren’t upwards of $100 an hour here. If I’m ever able to travel to Thailand, it will be a real treat to enjoy some massage. 

I was even running more to get ready to compete and it still got better. I guess I’m not going to be hobbling around forever. And I won my sparring tournament too, so everything worked out. Lol

My physical therapist did tell me that you have to be careful about the Achilles but that Achilles tendinitis doesn’t indicate that it will tear. We didn’t get into a big discussion about it so I can’t back that up with extra info. I would imagine that all the crazy jumping is what causes most basketball injuries which is less of a factor for MT. Maybe that will help your husband chill a little about the Achilles situation. 🤣

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/4/2019 at 7:33 AM, deano said:

Hi

If there's any long lasting swelling on your Achilles and depending on your age you may be heading in to Tendinosis territory, common amongst runners after a lay off, negative calf raises worked for me. there's plenty about it on You tube, might save you a trip to a physio.

It was definitely tendinitis but may have been getting worse. I’m 42 sooo, age is definitely a factor. My PT gave me some stretches and calf raises to deal with the issue. Dry needling helped too as did changing the type of shoes I wear.

its been some time since I asked this question But for some weird reason, I never any notifications. It’s almost gone at this point thankfully but it’s going to be a matter of proactively preventing a recurrence. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/7/2019 at 3:21 AM, CSIBMOD said:

I have NO idea why I never got notifications of responses her and I’m just seeing this now. Grrr. Anyhow, it down toward the heel. Strangely, the issue just sorta went away on its own. I changed the type of shoes I was wearing and all of a sudden the pain went away. Weird but I guess there is something to be said about supportive footwear. 

Good that you got it sorted out! 🙂

 

When I consulted my trainer about it he also treated my feet with some of his therapeutic torture instruments which was fucking painful but also helped. He went on a bit of a ramble about how people pay far too little attention to the health of their feet even though we all need them dayly for our whole lives and so much other stuff in your body depends on them as the form the basis of your posture and all.

He recommended using one of those spiky massage-balls for a bit every day. Basically you stand up and put one foot on the ball so you can create pressure, then you slowly move it back and forth. Doesn't exactly feel pleasant but helps to "unlock" your feet and the tendons in them.

When I saw him about it before showing me the thing with the ball he basically did the same thing to my feet with something that looked an awful lot like a handheld steel axe-blade 🤨

Yea well.... as my Kali trainer back in the day once said: "yea a healthy degree of sadism is necessary if you want to be a trainer."

Edited by Xestaro
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/11/2019 at 4:56 AM, Xestaro said:

Good that you got it sorted out! 🙂

 

When I consulted my trainer about it he also treated my feet with some of his therapeutic torture instruments which was fucking painful but also helped. He went on a bit of a ramble about how people pay far too little attention to the health of their feet even though we all need them dayly for our whole lives and so much other stuff in your body depends on them as the form the basis of your posture and all.

He recommended using one of those spiky massage-balls for a bit every day. Basically you stand up and put one foot on the ball so you can create pressure, then you slowly move it back and forth. Doesn't exactly feel pleasant but helps to "unlock" your feet and the tendons in them.

When I saw him about it before showing me the thing with the ball he basically did the same thing to my feet with something that looked an awful lot like a handheld steel axe-blade 🤨

Yea well.... as my Kali trainer back in the day once said: "yea a healthy degree of sadism is necessary if you want to be a trainer."

Thank you! This is a simple thing to incorporate into my training routine. Seems common sense that we need to pay attention to our feet but I never really thought about it. 
 

You had me cracking up about the sadism part. Definitely true! 🤣

  • hahaha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/13/2019 at 5:05 PM, CSIBMOD said:

Thank you! This is a simple thing to incorporate into my training routine. Seems common sense that we need to pay attention to our feet but I never really thought about it. 
 

You had me cracking up about the sadism part. Definitely true! 🤣

He said it while demonstrating some sort of joint lock on someone and had everybody flinch a little as they noticed how painful it was 😛

Now my current trainer.... he combines martial arts and physical therapy so he definitely is a sadist 🤣

I mean: I saw a few of his old fights from back in the day. He was this aggressive kind of fighter who threw lots of elbows and whatnot 😉

 

The massage-ball thing even works while sitting btw. As long as you can generate pressure. You can exert more force while standing of course but depending on how much you actually need...

Edited by Xestaro
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Most Recent Topics

  • Latest Comments

    • Here are some thoughts I had today regarding padwork which made me think about your question. It doesn't connect directly to your question, but it does open up thinking about padwork in different ways. (Also, thank you for your kind words - I realize that I neglected thanking you as it means a lot when people learn these deeper qualities, can feel that "language" element, and its bothered me that I didn't respond to what you said). If you click the top banner of the below you'll be taken to it. It is somewhat advanced stuff though, not easy to do or get to, but it does open up different ideas about what padwork is for, and what you can get out of it.  
    • Muay Khao in Padwork - note a little bit advanced stuff Talking a little more about Muay Khao training (and padwork), beyond some basic things like the padman doing rounds of "latched on" work where you trailer hitch and continuously knee or work into knees, there is a shape to Muay Khao that involves building up the fatigue in your opponent, which involves continuous pressuring and tempoing early on, nothing rushed, importantly with the mentality of depositing fatigue. Even if you don't have a padman aware of this, you can do this on your own, of your own device. People do not think much of manipulating or effecting your padman, but taking cue from David Goggins trying to mentally break his SEAL Team trainers, you can use your padman's energy managements to become aware of their fatigue, tempoing up or displacing them when they start to manage. This builds up your own sense of perception, becoming acutely aware of its signs, and developing responses, things that will serve you well in fights. This doesn't mean going HARD, like 200%. It means managing your own fatigue while you work that edge and tax your padman. The purpose of this is to slow reaction times and decision quality in later rounds in fights. You don't win fights early in Muay Khao work, you prepare the material so you can work late. A great padman will see and help you train this shape of the rounds, even as they manage their own fatigue. It goes without saying this involves not just "following along" with called strikes, which I believe is detrimental on a deeper level, because what you are training in those cases is "being dictated to". Lots of fighters have this problem, they have spent countless hours of (unconsciously) learning to be steered, so when their opponent looks to dictate timing, space or rhythm they have years of being comfortable being dictated to. This though is a subtle line to walk, and it depends a great deal on the experience of the fighter and the quality of the padman. Ideally, you want padwork to gravitate towards a dialogue, a back and forth, which mirrors the dialogue of fighting, accepting dictated tempos and spacing, modifying them, shaping them in return. Good padmen (who aren't just burning you out with kicks or holding combos over and over, largely ex-experienced fighters) will recognize this dialogue dimension, and you'll bring out more of their "fighter energy" and creativity, which is Golden stuff. Lesser experienced padman, or padmen who are just grinding, may not respond well, but you want to get into that zone of your 5 rounds being shaped like a fight...and for a Muay Khao fighter that means depositing fatigue in your padman early, if you can. Even if you can't, the aim of recognizing stalls, energy management, gatherings, and working on them yourself (not being passive) is a perceptual skill set you want to develop. For Muay Khao fighters though, you want to get to that clinch, or those finishing frames in the later rounds. You have to feel those angles of dominance, the cherry of what you built in previous rounds. Great padman know this, and develop pathways later where your body can sense, can experience those finishing elements. Femeu fighters, other style fighters, have other shapes in their fights. This is specific to Muay Khao.
    • Watched Sylvie's padwork today, something new I really have encouraged to happen and that she has been doing daily for a few weeks (?). Tons of in-the-pocket rhythms and improvisations, space management. I can see lots of growth, creativity, enjoyment. Good, good stuff. Unfortunately just like everyone else who has trained her for maybe 4 years now, they all want to take away her clinch. Nobody likes her clinch because it feels reductive. Hey, nobody respected the muay of Samson, Langsuan, even Dieselnoi either, this is a long story with the style. They don't care that she can beat 60 kg girls with it, and is hell for pretty much anyone to face, and has won nearly 200 fights with it (almost every win a direct result of her clinch), its an anti-style especially to the contemporary eye (which has been shaped by Entertainment Muay Thai). This is really good work, but its been years since she's trained with anyone who loved her Muay Khao stalking style and developed her into a clinch demon. All of her clinch dominance in the last several years, pretty much since COVID, has been pretty much kept on life-support by her alone, every clinch partner much bigger than her, stronger, Thai, so she just is managing controls, never being able to experience dominance in the grab, that taste of blood in the water with the lock, every kru in their own way discouraging her from the one thing she has been the best in the world among female fighters at. This is just the morphing of the opportunities of muay in Thailand, and something that has to be lived through. I'm excited for the in-the-pocket work, it fits nicely with what she's been developing with Chatchai. It's very good stuff. But ideally, all that pocket work should be used to pressure and punish the pocket so her clinch is even more unstoppable. Not sure how to get there, giving the state of Muay Thai and the place clinch has within it now. It's been sheer willpower from Sylvie that she is even the clinch fighter she has been over the last several years. Clinch is a vulnerable skill, it erodes quickly, and true clinch requires all kinds of rhythms and set ups to make it effective in the later rounds. It's a very complex, systematic approach to fighting. It's not just about winning clinch positions. It's the culminating persistence of them, using fatigue as a weapon so mistakes get made, positions neutralized too slowly, a bit late, windows getting bigger and bigger. I'm hoping this all comes together. If it does, and Sylvie can regain that late locking effectiveness, watch out. It will be quite a combination. This difficulty though, in the wide view, is that proper Muay Khao training likely does not exist as a whole any longer in Thailand, and that we've had to piece together elements of it even to get this far. There is an incredible bricolage to training in Thailand if you want to reach back into what the Golden Age was, because so much of the methods of muay have changed. Not only is the sport fought differently, and trained differently, its also thought differently even among Thais.
  • The Latest From Open Topics Forum

    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
    • In my experience, 1 pair of gloves is fine (14oz in my case, so I can spar safely), just air them out between training (bag gloves definitely not necessary). Shinguards are a good idea, though gyms will always have them and lend them out- just more hygienic to have your own.  2 pairs of wraps, 2 shorts (I like the lightweight Raja ones for the heat), 1 pair of good road running trainers. Good gumshield and groin-protector, naturally. Every time I finish training, I bring everything into the shower (not gloves or shinnies, obviously) with me to clean off the (bucketsfull in my case) of sweat, but things dry off quickly here outside of the monsoon season.  One thing I have found I like is smallish, cotton briefs for training (less cloth, therefore sweaty wetness than boxers, etc.- bring underwear from home- decent, cotton stuff is strangely expensive here). Don't weigh yourself down too much. You might want to buy shorts or vests from the gym(s) as (useful) souvenirs. I recommend Action Zone and Keelapan, next door, in Bangkok (good selection and prices):  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Action+Zone/@13.7474264,100.5206774,17z/data=!4m14!1m7!3m6!1s0x30e29931ee397e41:0x4c8f06926c37408b!2sAction+Zone!8m2!3d13.7474212!4d100.5232523!16s%2Fg%2F1hm3_f5d2!3m5!1s0x30e29931ee397e41:0x4c8f06926c37408b!8m2!3d13.7474212!4d100.5232523!16s%2Fg%2F1hm3_f5d2?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTAyOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
    • Hey! I totally get what you mean about pushing through—it can sometimes backfire, especially with mood swings and fatigue. Regarding repeated head blows and depression, there’s research showing a link, especially with conditions like CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). More athletes are recognizing the importance of mental health alongside training. 
    • If you need a chill video editing app for Windows, check out Movavi Video Editor. It's super easy to use, perfect for beginners. You can cut, merge, and add effects without feeling lost. They’ve got loads of tutorials to help you out! I found some dope tips on clipping videos with Movavi. It lets you quickly cut parts of your video, so you can make your edits just how you want. Hit up their site to learn more about how to clip your screen on Windows and see how it all works.
    • Hi all, I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be traveling to Thailand soon for just over a month of traveling and training. I am a complete beginner and do not own any training gear. One of the first stops on my trip will be to explore Bangkok and purchase equipment. What should be on my list? Clearly, gloves, wraps, shorts and mouthguard are required. I would be grateful for some more insight e.g. should I buy bag gloves and sparring gloves, whether shin pads are worthwhile for a beginner, etc. I'm partiularly conscious of the heat and humidity, it would make sense to pack two pairs of running shoes, two sets of gloves, several handwraps and lots of shorts. Any nuggets of wisdom are most welcome. Thanks in advance for your contributions!   
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      1.4k
    • Total Posts
      11.3k
×
×
  • Create New...