Load management for tendinopathy injuries

Load management is a strategy we use to treat tendinopathies and other repetitive stress injuries.

Tendinopathies often occur from a sudden increase in training load. Examples of this could be:

• An increase in the distance, pace or duration you run

• Changes in terrain

• Increasing the amount of weight you lift

• Increasing the number of training sessions per week

• A bigger range of motion during an exercise

• A reduction in rest time

But completely stopping training will likely not fix the tendon pain if you have overdone it.

To effectively manage a tendinopathy, we need to find an optimal training load to see the injury heal.

An optimal training load is where there is enough training stimulus to drive changes in the tendon structure, increasing its capacity to tolerate higher and more frequent mechanical strain.