Don't overload your tendons

Effective plyometric training There's a decided feel of spring in the air here in Istanbul. Whilst it's still coolish, the temperatures are no longer low enough to burn the nose off your face. It's hard to believe that it was snowing here only last week. Unfortunately, it also means that my single handed attempts to prop up the antihistamine industry have begun in earnest! I am running one of the units at Edith Cowan University on the Masters of Strength and Conditioning course and last night I completed packaging the lecture on tendinopathy management, so I thought I'd share some of that information with you guys. In particular, I'd like to chat about the impact that plyometrics have on tendon pathology. First of all, we need to define two terms: Plyometrics refers to drills where the musculotendinous unit is loaded and then contracted rapidly, utilising a phenomenon known as the stretch shorted cycle (SSC). The rapid stretch produces a more forceful contraction. You may remember a while back I talked about depth jumps and this is an example of a plyometric exercise. Bounding, jumping, skipping, hurdles and clap push ups are all examples of plyometric drills. Tendinopathy means pain in, and dysfunction of, a tendon. Plyometrics place a high load on tendons. Effective plyo performance relies on the tendon's great capacity to provide elastic recoil, which in turn enhances jump height etc. This load is sensed by the tenocytes (tendon cells) that increase their activity to provide a stronger supporting collagen framework within the tendon so that this increased load can be tolerated. The tenocytes are capable of dealing with this load so long as it's not too frequent. For a beginner, too frequent means engaging in high tendon load activities once every 3-4 days. What is high tendon load for a novice athlete may in fact be low tendon load for an experienced high jumper (in the same way that what is heavy for me may be as light as a feather for you). If the tenocytes are asked to deal with high loads on an all-too-frequent basis, they can become overworked and eventually burn out. This is the basis of the degenerative tendons we often see (for example, the grumbling Achilles tendon that complains for the first 10 minutes when we get out of bed in the morning). So how should this affect our plyometric programme planning? Well, to start with, we should be aware that whilst plyo exercises (hurdles etc.) don't feel particularly stressful, they are and we need to limit the reps to around 4-6 per set (after that, performance declines anyway). We need to build up slowly to allow the tenocytes to adapt to the increased load and we need to structure high, medium and low tendon load days into the programme. We also need to appreciate that tendon load capacity varies between, and even within, individuals. Generally speaking, plyometrics would fall into the high tendon load basket and so we need to take care if prescribing many sets of these during a week; once to twice a week should be sufficient for most folk.