Pre-injury
Just in case someone is reading who only has a sore Achilles tendon, I had a sore Achilles tendon before this happened.
I played volleyball weekly, if not daily from ages 12- 28. Then I had kids. Running and yoga were my main workouts with occasional tennis and biking. I picked up a volleyball again at 38 when my daughter started playing. A 10 year break! I didn’t start playing regularly until a couple months ago. I joined a rec team with a group of excellent players who all played in college and are quite a bit younger than me. In my volleyball lapse, I forgot how much of a workout it really is. Not wanting to forgo my workout routine, I continued my workouts/runs on the game days thinking of them as a warm up. I think that’s what did me in. What I thought were sore calf muscles were, I believe, Achilles tendons that were telling me to chill out. A busy travel/work schedule the two weeks preceding my injury led me to workout extra hard on the days I was home. I did a quick hill run the Saturday before which I read is not a good thing to do if you have a strained Achilles.
Could it have been prevented? I don’t know. My doctor thinks not. I eat only organic produce, grass fed meat, wild fish, etc. lots of veggies and nuts, nothing packaged. I drink a glass or two of wine most evenings. I don’t take any medication - not even Advil. I have always exercised regularly but not obsessively, 4-7 days per weeks my entire life. I am 5′11 14o pounds and have been (give or take a few #s) my entire adult life. I am of average build but I do have thin ankles. Does that have anything to do with it? I guess things just wear out.
May 20th, 2011 at 11:08 am
Hi Joann:
I also had my evaluation and surgery at a very large, respected orthopedic center here in Colorado, at which I have several personal friends. Although the foot/ankle doctor that took care of me was not a personal friend, he was very sharp. Here is what he told me:
Warming up, stretching and other things to prepare for exercise is always important, however, none of those things could have had anything to do with your ATR. Assuming you are healthy, with no history of tendinitis, the rupture occurs due to a misfire between your calf muscle and your Achilles. You have probably done the same move or jump, pushing off on that Achilles thousands of times before, but for some reason, this time your body impulses didn’t fire correctly and SNAP, you are in the ATR club. So when someone tells you maybe you should have stretched better, warmed up more, or prepared yourself more, you can tell them that it is more likely that you were just the victim of some very bad luck.
Cheers!
May 21st, 2011 at 12:33 am
I agree that ATR patients are “just the victim of some very bad luck”, though many of us are also participants in some very explosive (and therefore “high-risk”) sports, too. And a lot of us came back to that kind of sport after taking time off (though not me on that one).
Chuck, I don’t see how it’s a “misfire” between the muscle and the AT. There’s no electrical connection or coordination between the two, the muscle pulls on the AT which is attached to the heel, so your toe goes down — OR the AT tears instead. Most of our muscles are attached to tendons, and in general the tendons are strong enough to handle the most strenuous and violent pull from the muscle. Occasionally not, e.g. in ATRs.
Warming up before exercise seems to be a Good Thing, though its effect on preventing ATRs is probably very minimal, judging by the large proportion of us here (including me, BOTH times!) who ruptured our ATs several games into a sports session, i.e., after we were thoroughly warmed up.
Stretching before sports and such seems to be a BAD Thing, based on the latest evidence. It either has no effect on injuries or makes them slightly MORE likely, and it definitely DEcreases strength and speed and performance during sports. Many well-informed experts still think it’s useful to do stretching SESSIONS, but stretching as a prelude to strenuous activities does harm, according to what I’ve read. (First study was on Australian soldiers, but I think a few follow-up studies have been done since. NYTimes did a good review article a couple of years ago.)
Joann, I’ve long wondered if small/narrow joints are more prone to injury. Especially since ~10 years ago, when a woman I know — who has great legs, with unusually thin/narrow knees, like Britney Spears — completely destroyed one of them in a slow-speed powder fall while skiing in Whistler. If you’d destroyed your ankle joint, I’d suspect a connection, more than with an ATR. Did your AT rupture way down low, extremely close to the heel (and the slim ankle)?