Whether your injury came from sudden trauma or developed over time, once the Achilles gets damaged, recovery from Achilles tendon pain requires your attention. Every day with every step, your Achilles carries a huge load and the repetitive motion through the day can aggravate your condition. In the early days of recovery, try to rest your ankle as much as possible.
Understanding Achilles tendon pain is crucial for effective recovery. The following common causes can lead to Achilles tendonitis, Achilles tendon tears, and other Achilles tendon injuries.
It's important to understand the root cause of Achilles tendon pain to ensure a full recovery. Achilles injuries can range from Achilles tendonitis to more serious conditions like a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Typically, people recognize when this type of injury occurs. Whether it was due to a fall, over exertion, or moving the wrong way, it is usually accompanied by intense pain in the moment that continues to persist over time. The good news is that if your Achilles problems are the result of sudden injury, you just need to take the proper steps to recover, and it likely won't plague you again.
This is a super common scenario when it comes to Achilles injuries. When you drop your exercise levels, your tendons thin out and become weaker. When you attempt to resume your normal activity, you're much more vulnerable to tearing your Achilles. Returning to activity too quickly can lead to an Achilles tear or other serious complications.
This cause of injury may not be as obvious. This is typical of people who are very active and pushing their body more to its limits. Repetitive strain is a lot of motion under an unusually heavy load. The excess load can cause Achilles tendon pain.
Footwear can cause Achilles tendonitis, but footwear can't fix it. If you suspect footwear may be part of the cause, you need to ditch the shoes or boots or sandals that aggravate the injury. Avoid arch supports, which can lead to other foot problems.
If footwear was the cause, it should be pretty obvious - you'll feel the back of your shoe pressing on your Achilles as you move. If that's not the cause, changing your shoes won't fix your Achilles.
This one surprises a lot of people. Antibiotics are prescribed for good reason and if your doctor prescribes them, you should definitely use them. Antibiotics can often cause tendonitis to occur, so if you have been taking antibiotics and maintained a modest activity level while you were on them, this may have caused your Achilles pain.
Stretching and Exercise is great for muscles and it can be for tendons when done properly at the correct time. If you have an Achilles Tendon injury and you are trying to stretch and exercise it back to health you are only making the situation worse. At any time, if you feel Achilles tendon pain during any exercise or stretch, Stop immediately. If the stretch or exercise causes no tendon pain at all, you may be okay with that activity. Generally, when you have a tendon injury that is still painful, exercise and stretching really only put you at more risk of reinjury. You are better off resting until the Achilles pain subsides, and then work on strength and range of motion.
Sadly, the Internet is full of misinformation today. There are probably more bad treatments suggested for Achilles tendon injuries than most other ailments we see. In many cases you are being told to try treatments that can actually make your condition worse! Among these are insoles, elastic sleeves, pain creams, and several types of injections. For a rundown of dangerous and ineffective solutions to beware of, check out our Achilles Treatment Myths Page.
Your Achilles is pretty tough and it's not that easy to hurt it in the first place. Regardless of which reason above caused the initial injury, once it is injured, the path back can sometimes be difficult. For most people, it's not feasible to just stop using your ankle. So for most people, as fast as your body is attempting to heal the injury, your daily activity is causing reinjury. You rest and take a couple steps forward in the healing process, and then you do some activity that sends you a couple steps backward, undoing the healing that you just did. It is a vicious cycle that needs to be corrected if the injury has been plaguing you for some time.
Achilles tendonitis is often what develops when you had an initial injury that healed a bit and got reinjured, and that cycle has repeated for a long time. That pain you feel when you do activities, or perhaps it shows up afterwards, is a clear indication that you are moving the healing process backward. Pain in your Achilles means you are reinjuring your Achilles. There's no such thing as driving through the pain or pain being any kind of good sign when you are dealing with the Achilles. What is causing the pain is causing your Achilles Tendonitis to continue
Some people will be surprised to realize that things they have been doing that they thought would help are actually making the condition worse. Are you stretching it to help it heal and it hurts a bit during the stretch? Are you doing exercises to strengthen in and they hurt? Does your physio hurt? If any of these things cause pain in your Achilles, that pain means they are doing more damage than good. Exercise, stretching and physio can be good, but only if they don't involve pain. Driving through the pain is always bad.
Yes, it's impossible to stop all activity since you need to move to get through your day. Sometimes you're going to do something that hurts. That can't be avoided. But you definitely want to minimize the things that cause you pain. You want to make the backward steps of the healing process as few and as small as possible. That's usually enough to let you heal. If you don't want to wait, then there are also things you can do to make the steps forward in the healing process as big as possible.
To minimize pain and swelling, complete a ColdCure® treatment any time your pain level increases, or if you have been active. The ColdCure® Achilles Wrap provides superior relief of the swelling and pain that comes with Achilles Tendonitis. ColdCure® Achilles Wraps use cold and compression together, because cold and compression are the two things you need to eliminate pain and swelling as quickly and effectively as possible 1 / 2. The application of cold compression must be uniform and complete if it's going to work the best.3 / 4 This is why the ColdCure® Achilles Wrap has been custom designed to perfectly fit the back of the Ankle, to ensure that your injury receives an even distribution of cooling power.
If your biggest issue is the pain, then you definitely want the ColdCure® wrap. The ColdCure® Achilles Wrap comes with 3 swappable cold packs that contain our unique XC RigiGel® formula. This isn't that 'blue goo' that you get from the drug store, no way. This is super gel. It holds tons more cold and stays cold much longer. Its ice that bends like rubber. It's amazing. The elasticized wrap holds the cold firmly in place against your injury sucking away the pain while it gently reduces swelling. If pain is your #1 concern, this is your #1 solution. With extra gel packs included you can treat the pain over and over again, never running out of ice.
KB Basics Achilles Cold Pack - An Economical Alternative to ColdCure
This little gem is our low cost alternative to the ColdCure wrap. The ColdCure wrap fully opens and straps in place with Velcro closures. By comparison, this economical wrap is made of stretchy material and it slips on like a sock without adjustable straps. It fits most feet except for really big or really small ones. Where the ColdCure has 3 replaceable gel packs that you insert into the wrap, this basics version has just one gel pack that is sewn right into the wrap. In between uses you will put the entire wrap in the freezer, no just the gel pack like you do with the ColdCure version. For the price, though, this is a super high quality and effective little wrap for your Achilles. It's not quite ColdCure quality, but it sure is good!
Your ankle moves a lot through the day, and when you're injured with an Achilles Tendon Injury, you feel every little movement.
You can't stop everything and wait for your Achilles Tendonitis to go away, so let's provide some support for your ankle, without taking away your range of motion.
Support Tape™ is designed to protect your tendons, ligaments and muscles and help prevent further damage as you go through your day.
It does this all without restricting your range of motion.
Our skin is soft and elastic and can stretch much more than the tissue underneath.
When you apply Support Tape™ to your skin, it becomes a much more rigid surface than before; serving to limit how much the skin can stretch.
Support Tape™ makes your skin a source of outside support to hold your tissue in place, helping you avoid re-injury.24 25
That's why we call it armor for your injury.
Support Tape™ - Protection from Re-Injury
Too busy to be injured? Have to keep going? Then Support Tape™ is your "must have". Constant re-injury is often the biggest reason the Achilles doesn't heal. It heals when at rest but when you get back on your feet the injury gets worse.
Athletes are always taped up. That's to prevent against re-injury while they are active. And Support Tape™ is the best for that purpose.
Taping is very underappreciated and very effective. If you have to keep moving, you have to tape.
There's one big difference between King Brand Support Tape and regular kinesiology tapes and athletic tapes you find in the drug stores.
King Brand tape is medical grade; all those others are athletic grade.
The difference is that medical grade tape is designed to be worn all day long, day after day, like when you're dealing with Achilles Injuries.
They may look the same, but the materials are entirely different.
Athletic tape is designed for occasional, temporary use - maybe an hour or two at a time, every now and then.
The materials in Athletic tape can be toxic to your skin with prolonged exposure.
Many are even carcinogenic.
King Brand medical tape is designed for long term repeated use like you will use it treating your ankle.
Choose wisely and stay safe.
The color is purely your sense of style.
The Pre-Cut Strips are super convenient; they're really the right length for Achilles taping.
The Continuous Roll gives you more control over how you tape your Achilles and you get them most use out of a single roll.
We've briefly covered 7 common reasons people are plagued by Achilles Tendonitis. There's lots more information available. You can explore the Quick Links menu at the very bottom of the screen - they all containing more informaton about the condition. Here are some of the popular pages:
