Savvy525’s AchillesBlog

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I had a heel spur and achilles surgury may 20th 2020 did the PT and my calf has come back close to normal but cant do a one legged calf raise either. My calves have always been naturally big. Seems the achilles is weak but im not sure. Hearing all these stories of not being able to do one for years is disheartening. I have stopped therapy and been doing calf raises stretches but havent made it back to the gym since this Covid crap.

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I tore my left Achilles in august running up a ninja warrior warped wall. 13 weeks later in novemeber ( after about 8 weeks of physical therapy) I re ruptured my Achilles at physical therapy while practicing walking up and down steps. Here I am pushing 8 months post 2nd surgery and I still cannot even budge on a single leg lift. Also the muscle atrophy is terrible and I cannot curl my toes fully. Has anybody else had any luck with a full reovery?

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I’m not 100% sure this will work for you….but the leg workout routines really helped me a lot. But it took I would say…2 months straight consistent workout. One that helped me the most is the weight machine that you push with your foot against a flat bar. I could only do 10lbs when I first started. 10 reps of 10. Then got up to about 95 lbs…And that’s using two leg first, then one leg by itself. Obivouisly don’t overdo it when u start out. But this built both my calf and strengthened my Achilles tremendously. My Achilles is easily about 2 times thicker than my original. And guess what…I will be starting the same program again as I partially tore my Achilles again 2 weeks ago today…different leg. So same routine..I used to go actually twice a day everyday for weeks. As I said…that’s just my story…and not promising anything. But the leg routine honestly I think will help a lot. I really wish you luck.

2 yrs 3 months out and my calf strength is not coming back very well at all. My calf is visibility quite smaller than my healthy one.

I can do 10-15 calf raises with my bad one but I can never get past that.

Began a leg workout regiment 2 weeks ago hoping I can push past this barrier but I’m not sure what will or can push me over this.

Greetings. I ruptured my Achilles in 1991. I didn’t have insurance at the time so my rehab was nonexistent. Currently I still cannot lift my bodyweight at a 90 degree angle like my good leg. I’ve done seated calf raises with success, but I haven’t built up enough strength to raise my 200lbs by extending my leg. I am able to run, exercise, and do most things normally. I haven’t given up, but after 24 years the light seems dimmer. Hopefully you all will have a breakthrough and it will help people like me.

Hey, Savi, I remember you, welcome back. You were in Med School, weren’t you? Are you an MD now?

We have a lot in common, as you can see from my blog. I too am “impaired” in the straight-kneed 1-leg-heel-raise department, but totally unimpaired by my ATR(s) in all other departments. I can lift my heel off the floor far enough to slip my other foot under it past the knuckle on my big toe, but nowhere near (or as easily) as on the other side. In my case, that’s post-NON-op.

My other leg’s ATR got the surgery 8 years earlier, and has excellent 1-LHRs, but its repaired-short AT has apparently helped push my right knee out of alignment. I’ve been doing several months of PT and exercises (including lots of stretches), and I’m still recovering from my first volleyball session of the season (indoor beach, 2s, 3s, and 4s). My whole body is still stiff THREE DAYS later(!), but my right knee isn’t too bad, so maybe the program has been working well enough.

I think your experience AND mine proves that the last bit of calf-and-AT strength it takes to do a good 1-L HR is over-rated as a necessity for sports performance. AFAICT, anyway.

Hi, showing my ignorance here…

If you can do all that good stuff, do you need to worry about a single leg calf raise? I can do it, but did I do one before my atr? Probably not, why would I have?

It was probably a target to reach, but you’ve achieved a more than good enough fitness level, maybe better than pre-atr. Relax now and stay fit.

Yucca, I’ve long since given up on doing good 1-leg heel raises on my left leg, but I’ve also long since returned to aggressive bike riding, aggressive downhill skiing, competitive volleyball (including 2-on-2 beach volleyball), and anything else athletic I feel like doing. As I’ve outlined on my own blog here and elsewhere, I’ve been shocked at the “disconnect” — at how good my performance feels in all my sports, despite a clearly measurable strength deficit when I isolate that one muscle with that simple test. In my case, I think that part of the disconnect is probably because my soleus is close to 100%, and it’s responsible for ankle dorsiflection when my knee is bent, which is a fair bit of the time when I’m playing sports.

I’ve always had skinny calves and high Gastrocs (inherited from BOTH parents!), and I also tore my other AT 8 years before “this” one, so I don’t have a “factory original” leg to compare to any more! But when I stare at my legs in the mirror — something I assure you all I very seldom do! — it does seem that “this” calf muscle is a bit skinnier and higher (at the same ankle angle) than other, confirming

Yucca, I am 3 or 4 months ahead of you.

I was curious, so just measured calf circumference. It’s a little hard to get a precise, consistent measurement; but my best estimate is that they are still ~4% different (42cm vs. 40.5cm). If you look for it, you can see it, but I don’t think it’s noticeable when viewed casually; people notice the big tattoo way before they’d ever notice the minor size difference

As for strength, I’d say it’s about like the size differential. It’s there if you measure for it- but not really noticeable otherwise. I can do lots of single leg heel raises… finger tips against a wall, a set of 20 is no problem whatsoever.

I’m not sure what to attribute my success to. I think that I got lucky with a good surgeon- and got the tendon reconnected at a good length. To be honest, I think my gastroc is a tiny bit long, and my soleus is a tiny bit short. But, I think I fared better than many (most) others in this regard. If I’m right, and the gastroc is a bit long, I will probably never fully regain strength and symmetry.

There’s that old saying about not letting the perfect be t

Hi
I’m 15+ months past my atr surgery for a ruptured tendon. I’ve done my exercises religiously from 6 weeks post up on, plus massages daily, and intermittent professional calf massages, acupuncture for scar tissue, and innumerable untrasound treatments. My achilles is good, and I can do any activity I choose to, 5 hour hikes are no big deal, nor were 2-3 hour mountain bike tours.

But I can’t do a single calf raise!!!! And I have a small weak calf muscle!!! I’m about to give up on the strengthing exercises for that calf because nothing has changed in oh so long. The only thing keeping me at them at the moment, is the thought of, what happens if I do in my other achilles, as mine was a spontaneous rupture playing racket sports.

Has anybody gotten back the calf strength after struggling at this length of time post injury??

Hi all,

I, too, am trying to overcome the frustration of not being able to do a single leg heel raise. It’s been a year and 8 months for me, and maintaining strength and girth is nearly impossible. Thankfully, it sounds like this isn’t uncommon. I haven’t tried step ups on the stairs or heels raises in the pool, but those sound helpful. (Perhaps frequency is key too.) I just bought SPD shoes and a road bike to see if that might get me past this huge road block. Looking forward to seeing what happens.

Good luck to everyone. Thanks for sharing your stories.

And now we can add Cdn football player Brady Browne to the list — AND he went non-op, AND he’s posted a series of Youtube videos explaining his choice and cataloging his fast modern (and so far very successful-looking) rehab!

Mind you, he was near the end of his carreer anyway (at a geezer-like 29!), and not quite as prominent in his sport as David Beckham, so he may not return to pro football, much less attain stardom. . .

He says his decision was partly prompted by his Doctor telling him about two other CFL players who went non-op and came out happy. I don’t have their names.

Hello!
I had an achilles tendon repair in Apr. of this year. I have had about 6 1/2 months of PT and it still hurts a little to walk. Going downstairs is very painful. I am getting better with the pain and range of motion and strengthening slowly. I can’t believe it has taken so long. ( What I had was he removed the tendon from the bone and reattached it back in order to get to a bone spur to remove it.
Has anyone heard of more PT needed and still gotten well? What’s the most anyone has had successful PT?

Hi Savi,

Try walking backwards. Someone suggested it on this forum and it helped tremendously in breaking mental barriers!

Ryan Howard topic: MRI? Waste of money. To diagnose a ruptured achilles tendon, all you need is a Thompson test. I saw the play last night and knew he ruptured it. It happened to me last November and my doc said an MRI is useless for diagnosis unless you really want to blow $2000.

Re: Ryan Howard — his description and how he did it rang eerily familiar to me when I blew my left tendon out on 4/21/11 (although I was playing volleyball, not busting out of the batter’s box). My guess is, he’ll be back no earlier than the All-Star break. But as a pro athlete, he’ll should have the best of care, so for Phillies fans, hopefully he’ll be back sooner. But I’d be stunned if he did.

I am 10 months and haven’t been able to do a single leg heel raise either. I’m pretty sure it’s a mental thing bcuz I’ve been running 5k’s, playing softball and baseball since July (7 months).

Also, I bet Ryan Howard ruptured his left achilles at tonight’s Cards vs. Phillis game.

Savi,

I ruptured both last October and I too find it difficult to do single calf raises on either leg. The previous comment regarding the pool is a great idea and one that I forgot about. When I first started rehab, I started in the pool at different depths. I found that because the water supported most of my weight, I could isolate and engage the upper part of my calf to do a full calf raise. When I try to do it lately outside of water, my calf cramps up before I can get a full raise/rise?. Good luck to you and your recovery. Don’t give up.

Savi,

if your gym has a pool, i’ve found that doing heel raises in the pool and different depths has helped a lot. when the water is up to your chest, i practice a heel raise all the way to my tip toes. As i move into shallower depths, I work more on midway raises. This along with running sprints in the pool and actual jogging on the street (not treadmill) has helped my calf tremendously. i’ve also been hiking a bit lately and that has forced my calf to work harder than usual which leaves me sore for a couple of days. After a couple of days of recovery, my calf seems to be noticeably stronger.

I’m at 8 months post op and can probably do 1 very week single calf raise. i’ve stopped PT for now as i only have 10 sessions left. Once I strengthen my calf where i can do several single heel raises, I will return to finish out those sessions with hopefully more intense plymetrics which will allow my calf and ATR to return to explosive sports.

Good luck.

Savvy, I remember you and I had some big differences on the forum a year ago, but we’re in remarkable agreement now! About 1.5 yrs post-non-op, my left leg sounds remarkably like your 13-month post-op one. I’ve started bicycling a LOT on it, and running some on it (delayed a BUNCH by my open-heart surgery last Dec. 1!), and I may soon try competitive volleyball again. But still no full-height 1LHR for me, either.

If I had an answer, I’d share it with you. After my first ATR, 8 years earlier, after surgery and a frustratingly conservative rehab protocol, I was doing as many 1LHRs as I wanted at about 10 months. I expected the same this time, but no.

Not only are we all different, I think our TENDONS may be all different, too!

Good luck. I’m semi-idly thinking of springing the $65 for a fancy “isokinetic” session to quantify my strength deficit, both with bent knee and straight knee. (I think I’m close to 100% with bent knee, but with a significant deficit straight-kneed.) Then I’ll take that to my (non-op) OS, and/or my PT, to see what they think, or recommend.

So far, I’m amazed how little it seems to matter, even when I

Hi,

I just started doing assisted single leg calf raises and one thing that has helped me a lot in recovering some calf muscle is this exercise where I get in front of the stairs and put my injured leg two steps above my other leg and in a very slowly control manner I go up putting all my weight in my injured leg until my uninjured leg has reached the same step my injured one is at. I do this 3 times a day,each time has 4 sets of ten.

I hope you keep progressing!

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Hey Savi
I think about 4 months I was doing them. i don’t know that i’d be keen on running until you can do them. Funny, walking should give you an assisted heel raise, so would have thought it would be happening by now.

I started doing (standing in doorframe) up on two feet and down on the bad one - the eccentric (down) movement was apparently better for building muscle, worked for me anyway. Can you not do with either straight or bent leg - try the one you don’t normally try.

good luck!

I’m with you, Savi, in roughly the same spot despite our very different paths to get here. And you’re absolutely right, having a half-height 1-leg straight-kneed heel raise (in my case) doesn’t seem to create many problems — though I haven’t returned to the volleyball court yet, for other reasons (like open-heart surgery!).

But walking, skiing, bicycling, stairs, etc., are all more-or-less “perfect”. I can even do an energetic “silly walk” where I bounce up into a full heel lift at the end of every stride, but I can’t get up that high standing still.

Hey savvy525, Sounds like you’re doing great. Don’t stop now. As far as motivation, if you read my most recent post, mine current motivation is skiing. In the spring, it will be softball and mountain biking. Think of sports and activities that you love and really want to do, and you should have all motivation you need! Keep healing.

I just tripped over a video of Misty-May Treanor — including the ACTUAL RUPTURE(!) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqNGFoakTDA&feature=player_embedded .

It looks like she was doing “the move” that tore close to 50% of our ATs (and both of mine) — pushing off from a foot that’s well behind you, hard eccentric loading of the calf and AT.

And she apparently got surgery and a cast, straight “old school”.

Savi,
Time is your key word here, not so much amount of time at or in PT but time to heal a tendon that needs to hold a huge amount of weight and stress day in and day out. My PT experience was the re education of the foot and calf muscles, I could not believe with just a month or so in a cast\boot etc I couldn’t walk backward and lift the foot up or walk down stairs pointing my toe down. I had to land on the heel everytime as a protective means to a healing tendon.

But as far as everyday life, working and taking care of things around the house, in a boot until 8 to 10 weeks and given a hinged boot was no problem for me. I re-tore mine at 13 weeks post surgery because I believed the doc who said all was great at 12 weeks, so remember you aren’t out of the woods until you can do the 1 leg calf raise multiple times IMHO. But doing things with that in mind you can accomplish a lot. Just be smart about it.

Good luck, and keep heeling.

I started just after 2 wks in, and went ~1x/wk. At around week 18, my PT told me we’d gone about as far as we could go, but that he would hand me over to a colleague who would supervise an exercise-based rehab program in their gym. I did one session with her, but didn’t return — partly because I didn’t think there was anything in that program that I couldn’t do about as well at home. (Not that I actually DID those things at home. . . )

Savi, I’m guessing that your PT sessions were a lot more frequent than mine, since I think I could hold down a full-time job (or school) while fitting them in 1x/wk.

Heya Savvy, I am almost 8 weeks post op and feel your pain…..I feel sooo out of shape, add in a little body dismorphic syndrome and I feel like a stuffed pig!

Having gone through this before, I can say it just takes time. Alot of time!

After my first time around I would say while a little stiff, I became better than ever. It will come, just go SLOWLY! You dont want to re-injure anything….Like Norm said, bicycling is good. Or while the weather is still nice walking would be good too, just to get moving outside. Everyday I feel a little better……I was smiling yesterday because I can now walk up stairs sort of like a normal person

Im losing my mind over here….I have already started new playlists future workouts…….gonna hit some weights for now…. Happy healing…

Bicycling’s been my fave exercise, though it was brutal when I first got back onto the bike. I started in the boot, then continued in 2 shoes.

Scales ARE scientific, Scott! (And I stole the scale idea from some other folks here, including Doug53 — who also had one of the fastest rehabs hereabouts.) BTW, I found I got VERY different scale readings, depending on whether I did it bent-kneed (soleus?) or straight-kneed (gastroc?). I’ve been much stronger bent-kneed, at least this time around.

After my first ATR (and surgery) I did some (and shouldn’t have) at about 17 weeks, under my PT’s foolish directions. That caused a sharp pain at the back of my heel that kept me from walking properly barefoot again for another month. After that I didn’t rush to do more 1-leg heel raises!

But when I saw my OS for the last time — maybe 7 months in? — I could do a bunch OK, but I was grunting and groaning. (He told me to lay off high-risk sports until the grunting and groaning went away.) By about 10 months, I could do a bunch of them without the noise, and I resumed comp. volleyball.

This time (no surgery, and also 65 y.o.) strength recovery is much slower. Everything else has been much easier and also much quicker, but at 8 months, I’m still just getting my heel maybe 1-2 cm o

I too am curious about the average time most say. I’m at 10 wks post a re ATR. Mine was surgically repaired in march, I got to 13 wks and it blew out, 1 wk after the surgeon said all was good. He believed there was some stitches still there so he did the conservative route this time. I have yet to get to the 1 leg calf raise, and right now don’t really try. I do test it Norm’s way with the bathroom scale. I stand on the floor with the good leg and put the bad foot on scale and slowly apply pressure until the tendon feel sore or the heel goes down. I can do 1\2 my body wt right now, sometimes 2\3’s. Not scientific but at 8 wks it was 45 lbs now its 110 lbs. So I believe I have a long way to go.

hi savvy,

when i did my last ATR, i’m not exactly sure about when i could do a single leg calf raise, but i know for a fact i was playing soccer again by 5 months. i think i was doing the single leg raises around 3.5 months. from what i’m reading on other people’s blogs, this seems fast and i can only hope to reproduce that recovery for my current ATR. as soon as physio started, i did make a point of doing some kind of exercise pretty much every waking moment. like i remember when i could finally do single leg calf raises, i was doing 3 sets of 20 probably 9 or 10 times a day. i was probably overdoing it but i definitely think this helped and plan on doing it again.

Hi savvy525,

this could be totally wrong/conservative but I just came back from my 8 weeks visit with my OS who was very happy with my ROM and strength of tendon in general but told me that they don’t even start exercising the calf muscles until week 12 (surgical and non-surgical patients alike). My guess is that your PT knows best.
Good luck

Gerry, I think I’m with Doug on this. When your PT found a hitch in your gait, you were almost a year past the surgery that reattached your torn tendon ends. You’ve had a bunch of setbacks and some extended immobilization from them, but you should be way past any reasonable fear of re-rupturing your AT by walking, no matter how you do it. Savi, on the other hand, is maybe 6-9 weeks post-op (Install that widget please, Savi!!), and extremely vulnerable to re-rupture if he overloads his AT.

I don’t think anybody here is more into pushing his leg fast and no-pain-no-gain than Doug, based on his own very fast rehab, probably the fastest documented on this site. But for Savi to try doing something close to a 1-leg heel raise while he’s in single-digits weeks post-op would be asking way too much, IMHO.

I was personally around 17 weeks post-op from my first ATR — and enjoying the first day when I could walk normally in bare feet — when my PT foolishly told me to do as many 1-leg heel raises as I could. I foolishly did what she asked, and did maybe 3 or 4. It was very strenuous, but didn’t hurt — until several hours later! Then it

I highly doubt he has “absolutely” no strength because that would mean basically no muscle at all. The point the PT was trying to make is that in order to build strength, you have to work at doing things which may be nearly impossible. I weigh 138-140 pounds and can now press my body weight, but a year ago I could barely press 90 pounds. I had to work at doing something nearly impossible until it finally became possible. The same thing applies to rehab.

Gerry,

I don’t see what is confusing. Savi said he has “absolutely no strength” in his calf, so he cannot lift his heel while walking at all, unless I am misunderstanding what he is saying. When there is more calf strength, raising the heel before the other foot strikes the ground becomes possible. Perhaps your PT is saying to push down with the calf while walking, even if it cannot lift the heel.

Doug

I discussed this business about not being able to raise the injured heel before the non-injured side touches down without “quite a lot of calf strength” with my PT today. He got this confused look on his face and said, “That is one of the primary ways you build strength in the calf.” He said it doesn’t matter if you can’t do it well, the thing is to work on it all the time and it will get better. So, in order to regain strength in your calf, you have to do things which are difficult now but become easier the more you do them.

Congrats, Savi. And +1 to Doug53’s comment above. When you’re first walking in shoes, you should be looking for ways NOT to “load up” your calf and AT. (Gerry was much farther along than you when his PT spotted the hitch in his gait.)

Walking downstairs normally is an especially hard test for calf and AT, and you don’t want to take that hard test yet! So step down onto the nose of the step, half on, half off, and roll your foot over the edge. You probably used that technique in your boot, and it’s even more important to use it in 2 shoes. (You’ll also get downstairs twice as fast as the folks who always lead with the “bad” foot!)

Jla, your PT’s advice also sounds like a hard test for a vulnerable AT, unless maybe you described it backwards. Most of us started walking with the BAD foot way forward, and the GOOD foot just coming up to it, or only passing it by a little, precisely to AVOID rolling over the bad foot’s toe — which shifts all your weight onto your healing AT!

For heel pain, many of us adopted Crocs as our “2 shoes” and heaved a sigh of relief. Much cheaper than re-carpeting the whole house in 1cm-thick gel foam!

Thanks for your encouragement Gerry, Andrea, Doug, and jla! The heal pain seems to be getting less each day b/c my calf is slowly getting stronger each day!