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Achilles Tendon Pain Fast Relief In Minutes!
- chelsie462
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
This article is a transcribed, edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in June of 2024. For the original video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvfm3Lb3Ojs
Brad: All right, the Achilles tendon. If you've got Achilles tendon pain, we're going to show you the biggest mistake people make when they have this pain, and we're also going to show you how to remedy it.
Mike: So we're going to give you five steps to help calm down this pain to prevent limping from happening, and get you back into action.
Brad: That's right. Now, you have two of the Achilles tendons, and it's the largest tendon in your body. It accepts almost 100% of your weight every time you take a step as you walk. Now, when you jog, run, or jump up and down, that tendon can experience up to 10 times the amount of your body weight. It really has a big job to keep you up and moving.
Mike: Yeah, this tendon is actually part of a long chain running from your calf muscles down to your Achilles tendon, and actually it turns into your plantar fascia. So it's a large chain. It takes the brunt of the work when you are walking, jumping, etc.
Brad: Now I'm going to tell you the biggest mistake a lot of people make, and I actually did this myself years back, is that we get a strain in the Achilles tendon, and the first thing we think we have to do is stretch it. No, no, don't stretch it. Bob actually read a whole book from a person who studied this in detail, and we're going to show you the alternative to stretch it, because if you tear some tissues and then you stretch it, you simply retear the injured tissues. It's like pulling the scab off a cut. It just makes it prolonged, and the injury just lasts and lasts and lasts. If your Achilles tendon is really flamed up, sore, and it's just very tender, you really need to give it some rest. And I mean non-weight bearing rest, you don't have to lie down like Mike is here, but you can if you want, put some pillows under there. Get comfortable. You can do it in a recliner or in bed, whatever, but get a cold pack, one that is nice and pliable when you pull it out of the freezer. It'll work much better than if you get one of those that are stiff. Here we have his tendon marked in green. Lay it down, and it's nice to actually wrap it around. Get yourself some Velcro or some Ace wrap and get it so it conforms, and you get a lot of contact over that sore area. 15 to 20 minutes. Do that two, three times a day. It should settle down within a day or two. Then we can get onto the next part of the program.
Brad: I do want to follow up if you're using that cold pack. Now, this cold pack is a really nice one. It actually has a felt-like cloth surface on one side, so your skin doesn't get too cold. A lot of them don't. If that's the case, you're going to want to take a towel and put that over the cold pack and then wrap it around that ankle or make sure you have a sock on so you don't get too cold and you can actually irritate and frost bite your skin if you get too cold of a cold pack directly on your skin. Now let's talk about step number two.
Mike: Step number two is self-massage. What we're going to do is called cross-friction massage. So what we're going to do is actually grab the tendon, make sure this isn't too painful. If it's really painful just to the touch, it's too early for this step yet. If that's the case, you can certainly massage up in the calf muscle, belly into the tendon if it's not painful there to begin. If it feels good when you grab it, you can certainly massage it. You can actually kind of pinch your tendon because it's so thick, and you just kind of go back and forth working in spots that may be tender going up and down. This is just going to increase blood flow to the area, which can help the healing process.
Brad: That's right. That actually does do some as it's healing. There's going to be scar tissue, and it can break up scar tissue where it shouldn't be. Now, if it's sore when you first start doing this, but after about 30 seconds, it starts to feel good, or it feels numbish, then you know it's ready for that cross-friction massage. You're only going to do it for two or three minutes or until your thumbs or fingers get sore, which happens first. Mike, let's talk about the option if you want to work the muscle, so you don't wreck your fingers or irritate your fingers.
Mike: If you happen to have a massage gun, you can certainly use that instead of here. And I'm not going to go directly onto the tendon, going more at an angle, and again, I'm going to work this thick part of the tendon laterally. Do whatever area feels tender where it feels good. You can kind of dig in there like this. We have the round head on. Brad has an air cushion head. They're less aggressive, so it won't be as painful, especially if you're still healing in that region.
Brad: Yeah, you're not going to use one of these bullet heads or something that's too aggressive. The round head at an angle really makes a big difference. This one's a soft cushion head, and that would be a nice option as well.
Brad: If you happen to have one of those large guns that has 10 or 16 millimeters of amplitude, you're probably not going to use it at all down here. But if you want to work the calf muscles, which you do want to make sure your calf muscles stay supple and relaxed, so it takes stress off that tendon, go ahead with the larger gun if it's tolerated. You'll probably find one area that is tender and tight. Spend more time on that when it comes to the calf muscle, and you'll know once you get a feel for it and you work with your leg. Yeah. Mike, anything else?
Mike: No, let's go to the next part.
Brad: There you go. I'm having fun. This feels good. All right, now this is absolutely one of the most important keys to getting your Achilles to start strengthening, and this is very important. What we're actually going to do is isometric stressor strengthening on it before we start doing some strengthening, going up and down, like a lot of people make the mistake and jump right to that. It's too aggressive. Go ahead and explain it, Mike.
Mike: So to begin, start with something lower, maybe a two-by-four book, and over time you can progress to a stair if you like. Right now, I'm actually stretching my Achilles, which is what we don't really want to do. So what you want to do is just lift your feet up a little bit so your foot is level. This is going to start strengthening that Achilles tendon, and we're going to hold it here. Now you can go 15, 30 seconds if it feels hard, up to 45 seconds, just hold and stand in this position. You can use something to hold onto for balance if needed, and then relax. You can do that a few times a day. We don't want to do the full range of motion strengthening exercises like calf raises quite yet, early on. Just get a nice neutral position and hold it.
Brad: That's right. And you can see Mike is doing it with both feet, which is a good way to start. If it feels good for 45 seconds times three sets and you want to intensify it, simply take this foot and hold it so you can do it all the weight. And that's going to progress it accordingly before we start doing range of motion.
Brad: Okay, now after you've done the isometric, so you can do it on one foot, there's no pain, 45 seconds, two to three sets, and you do that three times a day, it's feeling better, and you notice that you can start to walk with small steps. It's not hurting so much anymore, it's actually starting to feel back to normal. Then we can start to do the strengthening exercises with range of motion, and Mike, show them how we're going to start with that.
Mike: So we're going to do calf raises. We're just going to start on a flat surface. So just stand on the floor. Again, hold onto something if you want to. We're just going to focus on going up on the toes and then back down to the floor. Nice slow, controlled motion. No hard jarring effects here at all. We're obviously not going to jump. So, just nice, slow, controlled motions. Again, five, 10 repetitions. You can work out the 15 if you want, and do three sets.
Brad: Now, when you feel comfortable doing three sets of 10 with this, with both feet, then you can start to go on one foot. But again, I would definitely have your hand on somewhere so you can assist or even up to a cupboard. So you can push a little bit with one or both hands to help that sore one and use good judgment. If you're developing pain after you do three or four of them, it's not ready yet. You want to get to 10 without pain before you go to the next step of exercises.
Mike: Now, once you've progressed to those exercises, feeling easy, comfortable, no pain, and say you are more active, you like to run, hike, whatever, bicycle. Now you're going to want to strengthen it a little more through a full range of motion. To do this, you're going to actually stand on the edge of a step. I would suggest wearing shoes. I just don't have them on for video purposes. So you're actually going to go down into a slight stretch and then up and do the calf raises. Again, start with both legs when you do this, five, 5, 10, 15 reps, whatever feels easy. If this becomes easy, you can go to one leg, do both legs. You may notice a difference. See if one side is a little weaker than the other, but this is going to strengthen through a full range of motion.
Brad: Again, no pain should be experienced while you do this. Perhaps a little stretch pain, but nothing that feels like a knife at all. That's going to be too aggressive if you do experience that. All right, now we want to get from this phase into the functional phase. Again, I just want to emphasize that if the most active you're going to get is a walking program or there are no real high-impact activities, you can skip that and just go walking. The big thing is just start feeling good while walking. Don't go out and overdo it too much, too soon. Just walk perhaps a block and back, see how it feels while you're walking, and the next day. If it feels good while you're walking, but the next day you notice it's a little sore, you may want to take that day off, wait till the day after, and go for a walk again. When you can go two days in a row walking a block, no pain while you're walking or the next day, then bump it up to two blocks. Don't go from one block to six blocks and think that that big of a step is going to be tolerated, because you might just take a big step backwards. So that's really important as you progress, getting back to your regular activity. Mike, do you want to talk about people who are going to be active, playing tennis, jumping rope, you know what else, whatever people do?
Mike: You're going to want to slowly progress in increasing your activity with that as well. So, say you are active for 20 minutes and it feels good, keep doing 20 minutes. Don't go up to an hour with an activity. You're going to have to slowly progress over time so your body gets acclimated and accommodated, preventing any injuries from recurring.
Brad: That's right. So if you are a tennis player, you're not going to jump from walking to playing an active, full-on on 100% game of tennis. You're going to do some side-to-side activities at a low 50% level and then work your way into that full level activity, and make sure you don't irritate it or tear it again.
Mike: So if you want to check out more videos on, say, progressing your Achilles tendonitis or other issues to be more active, you can check out our video "Fix Achilles Tendon Pain in 60 to 120 Seconds, Including Tendonitis, Strains, & Tears." However, if you want to just learn how to massage your Achilles tendon region a little bit better, you can check out our video "How To Use A Massage Gun On Achilles Tendonitis."
Brad: There you go. We've got all the answers A to Z, and just keep those Achilles tendons strong as you walk, run, play, and have fun. Take care.
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