Why Your Tendons Are Weak: The Science of Building Tendon Strength

hey what's up guys it's Matt with the movement system in this video we're going to talk about how to build Tenon strength a lot of you guys are strength and conditioning professionals personal trainers or just familiar with working out already and know how to build up a bicep muscle with muscle protein synthesis but what you might not know as much about is how to build Tenon strength here's how this video will break down first we'll explore the science of Tenon adaptation and collagen synthesis then we'll discuss specific exercises like isometrics eccentrics or heavy slow resistance

exercises to maximize tendon and ligament strength finally we'll wrap up with specific exercises and sets and Reps that you need to build strong tenants let's go and dive into it let's start with some fascinating research I want you guys to check out this image of a Patell tendon of an NBA athlete I want you to specifically look at the white spot on image a that is tendonopathy or an area of damaged tendon believe it or not the rehab world for years thought that it was actually impossible to heal that area of damaged tendon they thought

that it lacked blood flow and just wouldn't heal and instead that you just had to build strong tendon around the area of damaged tendon but as you can see from image B and C in this case the tenant actually did heal in this case this occurred over the course of 18 months and you can see that over that 18 months as that White Spot disappeared it was replaced with strong new tendon and here's another view of that tendon building up over time a shows that weak small tendon and then 18 months later you can see

a much thicker and stronger tendon now you're probably wondering two things though one what did they do to cause this to heal and build into a stronger tendon and two can you do it faster than in 18 months and I'll actually start with that second question the process of healing and rebuilding a tendon from damaged to much stronger often does occur much faster for example here it occurred with an Olympian in less than 2 months it's not quite as easy to see as the first example but this does show the tendon remodeling from the damaged

area in the middle on the image on the left to a significantly stronger remodeled tendon on the right all this to say you can heal your tendon and you can do so fairly quickly if you do the right training okay so now let's answer the most important question that you have what type of training do you need to do so that way you can build strong tendons like this because tendon pain is frustrating and it's obviously much better to just have strong tendons well after helping hundreds of people build stronger tendons I can tell you

that there are three things that you need to get right to actually build strong tendons and those are time tension and volume and once you see the science of how this works you'll understand how to get all three of those right and you'll know exactly how to build strong tendons anywhere in your body okay so let's break it down your tendon looks something like this you have a muscle here you have some area of healthy tendon and then you have some area of damaged tendon whenever you do very fast movements like jumping or sprinting your

Tenon has to lengthen very quickly now this area of damage tendon doesn't want to lengthen quickly and get injured so there's actually a sort of stress shielding protective mechanism going on here that's just a fancy way of saying your tendon basically protects the area of damage as much as it can but if the stress is too high you'll probably still end up irritating that area of damage tendon and you may have felt this for yourself if you've ever dealt with Jumper's knee and you did a oneel leg jump or a landing and you felt that

pain the bottom line is though fast movements like jumping don't heal your tendon and if anything they just kind of irritate the area of damage so we wouldn't expect to see tendon remodeling like we saw in the images earlier from doing Plyometrics but there is a different type of of exercise that can rebuild tendon and it's actually the one that they used to rebuild the NBA athletes tendon that we saw before and that type of exercise is an isometric meaning an exercise that involves holding a static muscle contraction for example a split squat isometric a

leg press isometric or a leg extension isometric holding a muscle contraction and holding it in place and here's why it works during an isometric muscle contraction you're slowly shortening the muscle and your tendon is slowly relaxing and lengthening this is called stress relaxation and it's a unique stimulus to this area of damaged tendon in fact it's one of the only ways to actually stimulate this area of damaged tendon to rebuild into a stronger tendon because to go from a weak and damaged tendon to a strong tendon we need those three things time tension and volume

so let's address each one first is time we need a muscle contraction that lasts long enough that the muscle can slowly shorten and the tendon can slowly lengthen it seems like from the research that The Sweet Spot here is around 30 seconds that allows the tendon to reduce tension by about 45% giving that stress relaxation response and remember that stress relaxation or that Tenon slowly lengthening is what helps rebuild and reform collagen but importantly we can't just hold a weak isometric contraction for 30 seconds barely trying and expect our tendon to actually get stronger this

is what a lot of people do and it doesn't work so now let's address point two which is tension and if there are any Engineers watching I think you'll get this right away basically there needs to be enough tension through the tendon to stimulate that tendon to actually get stronger a weak contraction just isn't going to be enough of a stimulus to cause the tissue to need to remodel or get stronger very similarly if you lift really light weights you wouldn't expect to see your muscle remodel or get stronger now how much tension though is

enough specifically for building the tendon across many studies it seems like this loading threshold is around 70% of Maximum Force output and that's actually pretty challenging whenever I actually measured this in the gym with Force plates it took some athletes 40 to 50 PB dumbbells for split squats or up to 200 plus pounds for a calf raise hold to hit that 70% of Maximum Force output now you may need to build up to this if you're starting at square one but a lot of people who have been battling tendon pain for years just haven't actually

done challenging enough isometrics to make their tendon stronger the bottom line is this the loading threshold needs to be reached to build stronger tendons okay so far we've said that you need to hold isometrics for long enough around 30 seconds and that you also need enough weight for it to be challenging around 70% a maximum but there is one more thing that you need to get right and that is volume so how many sets of these 30second challenging isometrics should you do and how often and here's what I've seen in the research and what I've

done with my clients you have to consider the individual response specifically your pain should return to Baseline within 24 hours because the truth is it's common for there to be some pain if you have weak or damaged tendons and you're doing these challenging exercises in fact strengthening your tendons can happen faster if you push to about a 4 out of 10 pain level rather than a zero out of 10 pain level but that said it's important that your pain returns to Baseline after 24 hours we don't want to see your pain getting worse overall though

I recommend anywhere from 3 to six sets of challenging 30-second isometrics and potentially two to three different exercise sizes for example you might do three sets of a leg extension isometric and four sets of a split squat isometric now if you're just maintaining or prehab then you probably only need to pick one exercise three sets of 30 seconds and that will be enough but if you're working through patellar tendonopathy or Achilles tendonopathy that has been persistent for months then you may need to work up to four to six sets of two to three different exercises

and be really consistent with that for several months in either case though I recommend training either three days per week or every other day so that way you give yourself 48 hours between each training session since net positive collagen synthesis typically occurs around 36 hours and this principle is very similar to how we would build muscle strength by pushing hard and then taking a rest day now this is a good time to mention although we have been talking about how this primarily applies to the Patell tendon this same principle can be used to build tendon

strength in any area of your body if you've irritated your bicep tendon bench pressing you can do isometric bench press or an isometric front raise to build up that bicep Tenon if you've irritated your Achilles Tenon running hills then you can do isometric calf raises with a barbell on your shoulders to deliver that high Force Through the calf and build a stronger Achilles tendon you can use long lever Bridge holds or even a Nordic hamstring curl position hold to build hamstring tendons you could use hangboard holds to build finger and wrist tendons for rock climbing

and you can use wrist extension or wrist supination isometric exercises to build up the lateral elbow for tennis so as you can see now that you know the principle and the science you can apply this to really any area in the body okay but there are two more important things that I want to cover one is that I want to mention that heavy slow loading for example going through a full range of motion split squat or calf raise can build 10in strength as well I typically still recommend starting with the isometric approach in most cases

but I do like choosing those heavy slow controlled exercises through full range of motion for example for an offseason athlete who needs to build both Tenon and muscle strength and if you do want to do slow controlled movements instead of isometrics the protocol would be almost identical just for the three sets of 30 seconds instead of holding for example a split squat in mid-range the athlete would slowly raise and lower keeping tension the whole time just make sure that you're still loading heavy enough to move the needle on building that tendon up okay now there

is one more thing that I want to address because I always get questions on this from athletes that I'm Consulting and in the comments of videos like this and that is about nutrition or supplementation in the examples of the tenin rebuilding that I showed earlier the athletes were supplementing collagen in the form of gelatin 30 to 60 minutes prior to performing the isometrics I think that this can actually make a small too moderate difference for you if you're trying to maximize your tendon strength gains the study I mentioned recommends specifically 15 G of gelatin with

225 mg of vitamin C and you can go get that from anywhere but to make this easy for you so you don't have to do the research on that yourself I did look up some examples that are popular and well-rated on Amazon for collagen or gelatin supplements and either of these could provide that 15 gam and then for vitamin C it's really cheap and easy you can just get something like this note though this is not nutrition advice consult with your doctor before taking any supplements I'm just sharing the protocol that was used in the

research that we reviewed today and you can do with that what you'd like as someone who's had Tenon pain myself and worked with a lot of athletes with Tenon pain who have been frustrated by protocols that didn't work I really hope that this video is helpful for you and points you in the right direction because if you get just a few things right building tenant strength is simple and very effective if you learned something today and you appreciate that feel free to smash that like button subscribe so miss any future videos and drop a comment

below if you do have any questions and I'll try to point you in the right direction thanks so much for watching guys and I'll catch you in the next one take care [Music]