How to avoid injuring the Achilles - 3 Things You Should Know
While no injury is ever easy to accept, the Achilles is definitely one that you try to avoid.
The achilles tendon, just like the rest of the body, has its own purpose and function. It connects the foot to your calf muscle giving more strength for push-off, it helps in deceleration of the foot when walking for a controlled step pattern, and it provides stabilization at one of the most used joints in the body, the ankle.
1. Poor Blood Supply. Similar to other areas of the body that are difficult to heal on their own such as the meniscus in the knee, disc in the back and the supraspinatus tendon in the shoulder, rotator cuff. With a poor blood supply the healing rate is slow thus requiring a lengthy rehabilitation phase up to a year or longer.
2. Tendon Alignment. The muscle tendon fibers are inter-twinned and cross each thus are not in direct alignment like muscle tissue. So in order to get the most out of keeping it flexible you want to have a continuous routine of stretching the achilles from multiple directions. Or simply, put the calf on stretch and add dynamic movement to catch it from all angles.
3. Joint Alignment. Due to the hand dominance pattern you’ll commonly experience proper ankle and foot alignment issues that people commonly try to fix with orthotics or shoes. This is a good temporary solution but for long term, doesn’t address the issue.
Whereas some injuries are unavoidable due to position or circumstances, you can lessen the chance by staying proactive in the activities you do to main the health and extensibility of your tissues.
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