I’ve had a small tear in my quadriceps tendon for 7 years now. Not the patellar tendon, which is the primary problem in jumper’s knee. Do you have any thoughts on how the jumper’s knee protocol can be adapted to heal the quad tendon? Many thanks!
Hey Dmitry — without reading up on the specific injury and having not gone through it myself, I don’t really know — but my hunch is that low intensity high frequency isometrics have a general potential to coordinate healing processes in damaged soft tissue. You could experiment with 3-5 sets of isos, staying within 4/10 on the pain scale — and see if that changes things over the span of a couple of weeks. I’d guess that the severity of the injury would be a factor in how successful this would be — but the body is highly adaptable, so even if the mechanisms I describe in the article don’t work, there could be other ways that the isos help — like changing the “beliefs” of the tissue, in terms of how much load they predict they can handle. It’s all about getting to the tissues that normally shy away from loading. Let me know how it goes, if you take up daily isos for a couple of weeks
Hey Una, this material has been really helpful for me and my clients — I hope it helps you too. One more piece of information that’s been insightful: Keith Barr said that stiffness in the joints in the morning is a sign of overly strong muscles relative to tendons. I’ve been introducing isometrics for my feet every morning since reading the article, and already feeling much better. Tendon compliance seems to be an important piece of movement / wellbeing puzzle. Warm regards
I’ve had a small tear in my quadriceps tendon for 7 years now. Not the patellar tendon, which is the primary problem in jumper’s knee. Do you have any thoughts on how the jumper’s knee protocol can be adapted to heal the quad tendon? Many thanks!
Hey Dmitry — without reading up on the specific injury and having not gone through it myself, I don’t really know — but my hunch is that low intensity high frequency isometrics have a general potential to coordinate healing processes in damaged soft tissue. You could experiment with 3-5 sets of isos, staying within 4/10 on the pain scale — and see if that changes things over the span of a couple of weeks. I’d guess that the severity of the injury would be a factor in how successful this would be — but the body is highly adaptable, so even if the mechanisms I describe in the article don’t work, there could be other ways that the isos help — like changing the “beliefs” of the tissue, in terms of how much load they predict they can handle. It’s all about getting to the tissues that normally shy away from loading. Let me know how it goes, if you take up daily isos for a couple of weeks
Thanks! I’ll give it a try and report back
Thank you so much for this
Hey Una, this material has been really helpful for me and my clients — I hope it helps you too. One more piece of information that’s been insightful: Keith Barr said that stiffness in the joints in the morning is a sign of overly strong muscles relative to tendons. I’ve been introducing isometrics for my feet every morning since reading the article, and already feeling much better. Tendon compliance seems to be an important piece of movement / wellbeing puzzle. Warm regards