Another very common injury that plagues many a runner is, Achilles tendon problems. On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, Lindsey helps Wendy, and all Achilles pain suffers out; with some valuable advice and tips on diagnosing the problem, and what you can try do to get it sorted.

Transcript

Brad Brown: Welcome onto yet another edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, don’t forget to check out the Comrades Marathon webinars, they are back as well. Just go to coachparry.com/webinar, you can register for the next one and do join us, if you are training for Comrades, some great advice in there. Lindsey, a question in from Wendy Denston.

Wendy is saying that she’s struggling with an Achilles tendon problem, it’s just not getting any better. She says she can’t even run, it’s so painful, she needs a training programme to run a marathon in the first week of December.

I don’t know about you, but she shouldn’t be worrying about a marathon first week in December, she should be getting that Achilles tendon sorted out because there’s going to be no running if that ruptures or just progresses and gets worse. What advice would you give her?

Lindsey Parry: Look, Achilles tendon is a real irritating injury. Sometimes they clear up really fast, as soon as we find out the trigger mechanism. But once the level of irritation in that Achilles gets to a certain point, they do take a bit of time to clear up.

Checklist to finding what’s causing your Achilles troubles

There’s no question about it, they are annoying. There’s a whole lot of checklists that we have to go through here. What is the heel/toe drop of your shoe? The traditional heel/toe drop is 12mm, but most shoes nowadays are lower than that, depending on the brand.

Your Nike Pegasus is 10mm, most of your New Balance shoes are 8mm or 6mm, some of your Saucony have a full range going from 4mm up to 12mm, I think Brooks is the same. What is that mm drop and if you really are having Achilles issues, you probably should be in a 12mm drop.

You can put a high density foam into the shoe to take some pressure off that Achilles and that may make a nice difference. You can certainly strengthen your calf, your Soleus and your gastroc which will help in a short term. You probably first need to wait for the pain to subside in the Achilles. Very definitely can get physiotherapy treatment and that is quite successful.

Needling – can this help sort your Achilles pain?

I had some very interesting treatments from a gentlemen in Cape Town by the name of Graham Lindenberg where he actually stuck about 15 needles into my Achilles tendon. It made it damn near impossible to walk the next day, but within three days I was running and the injury that had been bugging me for ages.

So there are obviously a few, not all physios treat by getting into your soleus, which is normally the culprit, but sometimes into your gastroc and loosening that up, get some needles in there and help the degree of the inflammation.

If you do have access to a sports doctor that can actually have a look on a sonar and see how much fluid is in the Achilles but one thing I agree with Brad on completely is that there is very little sense in running a marathon in December.

You’ll only make it worse and if you start to get significant thickening in that Achilles, then you’re giving yourself a long, long road to recovery. Get yourself to a physio, get a decent diagnosis, check out your biomechanics, look at your shoes, once the pain subsides, strengthen those soleus and gastroc muscles and then on you go.

BB: Lindsey, as frustrating as it is, I’ve been there, I’ve struggled with Achilles injuries for the last 18 months and they’re finally sorted, but one thing I’ve learnt is it doesn’t get better if you run on it. Wendy, ja, I think it’s a typical runner thing, you know it’s sore, but we’re going to take it out for a 10km run to see how it feels, it’s not going to feel better.

Lindsey, you always joke about that all the time, but it is so true. Wendy, get it checked out and hopefully you’ll be back on the road soon and maybe push that marathon out a little bit later. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.