Achilles Tendon Injury Rehab (Part 4 of 4) - Return to Sport Dynamic Exercise

Sports Rehab Success Show

Your #1 site for all things sports rehab, sports performance, and orthopedic rehabilitation is: https://www.sportsrehabexpert.com/

Here are the links to the previews videos to Achilles Tendon Injury Rehab:

Why You Should Stop Stretching - Part 1: https://youtu.be/_Bc8ncc0uUg

Easiest Achilles Self Treatment - Part 2: https://youtu.be/gLts8rV6aFk

Flat Feet or Arched Feet Problems? - Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfwrzLTE5Ys

Today we are discussing Return to Sport Dynamic Exercises you should consider following an Achilles Tendon Injury.

Now before we list the exercises and why we use them. I need you to consider pain levels before starting these activities. Again, there are only 3 responses to an injury - better, no change in pain, or worse while doing an exercise or after the exercise.

When doing the dynamic exercises it should either feel better or no change at all in symptoms for you to safely perform these exercises. The exercises will be listed in order of easiest to hardest:

1) Single leg hops with band assist - Depending on the comfort level you can use more or less tension on the band. A thicker band will obviously help reduce the load as well. This exercise is designed to help create cocontraction of the achilles, hamstring, quad and glute. The position of your foot, knee, and hip mimic the position your joints will be in during top and sprinting and taking off for a 1 foot jump.

2) Double Contact Skip - Performed for the same purpose as the previous exercise above. Only difference is now there is no assist. You are also having to manage a horizontal force vector as well (which we know happens in sports).

3) Low Dribbling - This exercise allows you to perform running without actually running. The quick ground contacts and higher stride frequency reduces the load so that you can perform running or sprinting without actually sprinting at high velocities to again manage the amount of load through the achilles tendon to your comfort level.

After all these are completely comfortable then we start considering more actual percentage based sprint training in an ideal return to play scenario.