General Workout + Volleyball

[BHitterDPasser]

It seems odd the they would identify your hip flexors as causing your achilles tendonitus as they are on opposite ends of the leg. Typically Achilles Tendonitus has to deal with arch or calve issues, I thought.

Did you ask your therpapist?

Not directly realted to your problem, but when I saw my Orthopedist about tendonitus, he told me that some studies suggest ~1,000 mg/day of vitamin C has been shown to help heal tendons/alleviate tendonitus.

[nmsvbteam]

Hey Cheetah,

That seems a bit odd of an assessment to me. My experience has been more of compensations occurring up the chain, or parallel. It's easier for me to see how tight hip flexors would lead to a weakened gluteals or problems up the back. I suppose the thought could be that it is shifting your center of gravity forward and your compensation is to pull down on your achilles. I'm definitely an advocate of correcting imbalances, but I don't think that is the only thing you would need to do. I'm not a PT, but I would think that an imbalance that caused more of a rotation in your leg would place a greater stress on the achilles. I've been lucky with my ankles so far, my personal protocol is lots of calf stretches at different angles and heavy, heavy calf raises with toes in different directions. It seems that having strong supporting tendons and ligaments and good flexibility helps to take the pressure off the achilles.

After a long winded comment like that, I don't think the hip flexor correction will hurt (super common as you know) but it doesn't really sound to me like it would be the primary cause of your achilles problems.

On a side note, I've been having some acute knee pain lately. I hate the idea of getting cut, so I went to another player's clinic who is pioneering some new treatment methods. They used ultrasound to check the knee. Turns out no ligament, bone or cartilage damage, which was a huge relief. I did have a ton of fluid build up behind the knee cap. Treatment involved a series of manipulations on the tendons, releasing the knee cap and then wrapping my knee in kinesiotape. I had worried I might lose the season, now I've been cleared to go out and play this weekend. There is definitely something to be said for getting the body into it's proper alignments...

Good luck with your rehab, I hope it goes smooth and you can get yourself back on track quick!

[cheetah]

[quote=nmsvbteam;39730]

"I suppose the thought could be that it is shifting your center of gravity forward and your compensation is to pull down on your achilles."

I think what you mentioned above may be exactly what they're getting at. The physical therapist said that because of my hip flexors/psoas being tight, it is leading to an anterior tilt in my pelvis, which in turn has caused my left leg to be almost a centimeter longer than the right. Because of the leg length difference, I am putting most of of the stress on my left with running and jumping, and ironically while going through some assessments, I also found that my balance on my left leg (while standing on on a bosu, flat side up, on one leg, while holding my right leg in a quad stretch) is 100% better then on my right leg, even though my left achillies is injured! So it must be true, I must favor my left leg. Don't get me wrong, we are doing some calf stretching, and also iontoferesis (applying a topical steriod to the achillies with some sort of machine to decrease pain and immflamation) but the PT is also 90% focusing on proper stretching techniques of the hip flexors and doing some funky adjustment techniques, which in turn is evening out my leg length. (on an interesting side note: my achillies flared up not from volleyball...one of my individuals...I work with adults with developmental disabilities...threw a vase at me and I tweeked my achillies in an awkward way while trying to avoid getting hit by the flying base back in August...since then my achillies hasn't been the same)

I just hope that they are treating my injury in the proper way...I want to be ready to play beach this season, hopefully in about 2 months. My husband and I are leaving on a carribean cruise in about 2 weeks, and i was hoping to do some sand training while in port, but i guess that will have to wait

Thanks for your two cents...That's great news about your knee. I hope it continues to improve. are you playing in a doubles tourney this weekend? It is a balmly 32 here and Philly and we're expecting a snow storm tommorow

[cheetah]

Originally Posted by BHitterDPasser

It seems odd the they would identify your hip flexors as causing your achilles tendonitus as they are on opposite ends of the leg. Typically Achilles Tendonitus has to deal with arch or calve issues, I thought.

Did you ask your therpapist?

Not directly realted to your problem, but when I saw my Orthopedist about tendonitus, he told me that some studies suggest ~1,000 mg/day of vitamin C has been shown to help heal tendons/alleviate tendonitus.

Hmmmm, thanks BHDP...I will have to look into the vitamin C. At this point I'm willing to do anything to do anything to speed up the healing process (it's been over 6 months now since the initial work injury that caused the tendonitis) I just hope they're on the right track to fixing me. Their whole approach just seems really out there. The therapist is the one that came up this this wacked out idea about my leg length being the main cause of my achillies tendonitis, and that the leg length discrepency is due to me being out of alignment because of my tight hip flexors, psoas and overall inflexibility. At least they are also going to treat it with medicine, a topical steroid called dextromethisome which they are going to apply with this specialized ultrasound machine in therapy, so hopefully that will aid in my recovery. and I will try to be more vigilant with the stretching.....although I cringe at the thought of doing an hour and a half of Yoga every day...which is what the crazy physical therapist recommended!!!!!