Achilles Tendonitis

[adam]

Anybody had this, or just a torn calf muscle, from skiing? Skied some moguls a little to loosely today and cased one very hard. Just got new liners which are pretty tight so my heel didn't move at all, just flexed very far forward. Felt like I had aggravated my ankle a bit, which I severely sprained a year ago, but when I got out of my boots there was a lot of pain in both of my achilles, much more so on with my bad ankle side. I can walk around now (big improvement from the first half hour out of my boots), but there is still a lot of tightness in both. Icing it now.

anyone have similar experiences?

[idiot]

I had bursitis (sp.) in my achillies that was one of the most painful injuries I have had in my life. It would seem to go away and I would get back out on a snowboard. It would come back immediately. Took a year off completely and it came back when I got back out the next year.

Started skiing because the lack of flex in the boots didn't trigger the injury.

Later I found that it was the particular pair of boots I was wearing. So you may want to think about the boots if you just changed your set up.

[Eldo]

Try the Gimp forum. Pretty sure this has been discussed there.

[XXX-er]

I've had plantar fascitis & a strained achilles and the one thing you CAN do is ski with yer foot encased in big plastic fixed heel boot or a tele boot or even xc skate boots but the xc kick and glide did hurt

I think these are conditions brought on by repetative stress of running not a bad mogul run

[linds-o-rama]

I'm surprised you haven't been flamed for posting in the wrong forum!

I struggled with achillies tendonitis for a few seasons. It sucked. I ultimately associated it with too-soft ski boots. Once I started riding stiffer boots in the resort, it pretty much went away.

I'd recommend RICE for a week, arnica, and lots of stretching (downward dog, etc). When you're feeling better, do some eccentric calf raises. That's the only exercise that my PT said would help with AT.

Good luck and move your post!

[UrMomsKneePads]

I'm surprised you haven't been flamed for posting in the wrong forum!

I struggled with achillies tendonitis for a few seasons. It sucked. I ultimately associated it with too-soft ski boots. Once I started riding stiffer boots in the resort, it pretty much went away.

I'd recommend RICE for a week, arnica, and lots of stretching (downward dog, etc). When you're feeling better, do some eccentric calf raises. That's the only exercise that my PT said would help with AT.

x2. Tight calves can be a major contributed to Achilles issues. RICE, and stretch one it calms down.

[Downbound Train]

I gave myself tendonitis running in five fingers. I spent 6 months barely being able to walk every morning when I woke up. Luckily it would loosen up as the day went on. Always hurt though.

Cured it with the Stair Master at the club. Alternate between climbing on toes to strengthen the calf and climbing in a heel down off the edge of the step position to stretch the tendon.

NOTE: This worked for me but I am not a Doctor nor do I play one on the internet.

[astralboy15]

I got in the fall by upping my mileage/speed too fast. Sucks. You have two real options.

1) Let it rest. Avoid anything that causes you pain. Once the pain has gone to zero, or almost zero, begin to stretch your calves, hamstrings, and gluts. When these muscles groups get tight (read: shortened) (especially the calves) and you pull them too hard you will likely end up with AT. So the obvious solution is to loosen those muscle groups up a bit. After a little stretching ease your self back into the activities that hurt it in the first place. Then, after a while, the pain is gone and you can be back to 100%.

2) Rest until the pain has gone down a bit, then get back on with your life. Think of it like playing a little too much dodgeball. Sure the next morning your shoulder is going to kill, but there isn't anything functionally wrong with it - you just put it under a lot of stress. So, wait for the pain to subside to a usable level and continue you life. But this COULD be a bad idea as you may still have short posterior muscles but this is the first time you're realizing it

But of course the best option is the more conservative option. The last thing you want is to give yourself AT for life. To ease AT pain you may want to get some heel lift inserts for your shoes (or just make lifts from an old shoe you have laying around). Only use these until pain without them isn't a big deal. Using heel lifts for too long with shorten your calves and make you more prone to developing AT later on. Icing it also helps. I'd recommend filling a styrofoam cup with water, freezing it, then rubbing the ice block up and down the tendon.

Hopefully some of this helps. Oh yeah, third option. Snowboard. Funny thing is, when I got AT in the fall the one thing that I could do with zero pain was snowboard

[freeheel80731]

WTF?! get this bad mojo out of the ski/snowboard forum! almost as bad as starting a '1000" winter' thread before the season begins!

I can't believe you have 3000 posts - I'm so much better than you

btw - get healed up, being injured sucks

[adam]

So stretched it a bunch yesterday and iced it, felt good enough in the morning to ski for a couple hours. Took pretty easy out there and only kinda sore today. But now my knee hurts - wtf?

[astralboy15]

Two of your calve muscles cross the knee - gastrocnemius and plantaris - could be from the ankle, or maybe you just hurt the knee on the cased mogul and it's just now starting to show. Ibuprofen and a couple days off?