Achilles Morning Stiffness

Age? Your post describes me as I hit my forties.

I'm a 21 year old male

i have had it several times. most important: keep up the eccentric exercises very strictly and perhaps you should use gel pads/heel pads for a while. i strongly recommend to introduce cycling days instead of easy running days, at least for three weeks. this turned out to be very helpful.

achilles morning stiffness is a strong warning signal. i have ignored it once and the fact that it got more painful for a few days. quite suddenly this ended one morning in a situation without any improvement, i. e. a heavy achilles tendonitis (impossible to run for months).

It's a circulation issue of how you sleep. If you sleep in shorts it is worse than light pj pants. Lift heavy weights and balance ball exercises. I used the Ultra Boost Sts because they have no heel counter. You are probably standing too much during the day.

I had Achilles tendinitis for a few years. It wasn't just the morning stiffness thing, but that was part of it. What worked for me was "writing the alphabet" with my foot (if that makes any sense*) before I got out of bed.

* I don't know if other people know what this is, I'd never heard of it until a coach brought it up. Basically you move your ankle in a way that makes it so that your toes would trace the letter A, then do the same for the rest of the alphabet.

All the advice here is pretty good. I've been where you are far too many times, and it will get worse if you ignore it. Biking is good, eccentric calf drops are essential, calf raises are good too.

I ended up with a Haglund deformity; it was partially congenital but got much worse due to repeated Achilles abuse. I'm a mid-40s male and it took me a full 2 year to fully recover from the surgery and be able to get into 5+ day-a-week running. Would not highly recommend...

How many drops are you doing? and how slowly?

I am 29 and I do these stretches 2-3x a day.

I also warm-up my achilles/soleus with a dip in a hot bath for ten minutes.

After a run, i'll ice and take some ibuprofen, then another hot bath soak, I may also do a TENS unit session. Gets me through the day and has helped with the injury. I am on two weeks of this routine and can feel a difference.

Hey what TENS machine do you recommend? I was looking at getting one for my achilles tendonitis...Ive been dealing with the pain for about 6-7mo and only now am I taking it serious with eccentric raises, standing calf raises, rolling, icing and heating.

I was looking into the TechCare Massager...

I bought this, at the time I didn't realize it provided Electrical Muscle Stimulation. I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm sure any brand would be fine, just read the reviews, and from personal experience I wouldn't bother with the cheaper ones...

I have experience with this wrote:

How many drops are you doing? and how slowly?

If I'm actively fighting Achilles tendonosis, I'll do a set of 30 in the morning and another 30 in the evening, and sometimes a 3rd set somewhere else in the day. I'll also wear a backpack and put 40+ pounds of kettle bells in there, and then do the drops smoothly and slowly - 2-3 seconds on each drop. According to the "Alfredson protocol" (google it) you want the exercise to be mildly painful, so adjust weight in backpack accordingly.

Also, it's important to do the right kind of drops for your injury. If you have mid-achilles pain, do straight-leg drops on the stairs (heel drops below stair height), but if the pain is insertional (at the back of the heel), you should do the drops with a bent knee so the heel drops to be level with the toes.

It takes about 12 weeks on this protocol to recover from the acute stage, after which you can back off and go into maintenance mode. With my Haglunds (heel) pain, I just do raises and drops while I brush my teeth (bent leg).

Take 2-3 weeks off and see if it goes away. Then do easy runs and see how it feels the next day. Run every other day for a couple weeks, increasing distance only if no ache in morning. Avoid hills. Probably better to clear the inflammation before it progresses. Then you are screwed.

I probably wouldn't follow my own advice as I ran for 10 years with retrocalcaneal bursitis. Hurt beginning runs and later in them . The worst was after runs, especially in the morning or after sitting for awhile. I'd limp. My wife called me Peg Leg the Pirate and begged me to stop running. Stupidly, I didn't . Eventually, I had surgery and felt great for two years until it returned...in the other foot. Ran thru that for a couple years. Eventually went away after taking some time off--4 months. Now I take days off at the slightest hint of stiffness. I also don't run 80-90 mpw anymore. More like 55-65. I'm old though and seem to run best in that range since I don't need to focus in aerobic development as much as speed. Days off(1-2 a week) and keeping calves loose seem to keep it managed.

itoy wrote:

Does anyone have any experience running through Achilles tendonitis/tendonosis with only morning stiffness? I have morning stiffness that tends to go away after eccentric heel drops and stretching. I can run with zero pain and next to no discomfort. The only issue is the extreme stiffness and dull ache I feel for the first 15 minutes out of bed. I have been running for a month and this hasn't gotten considerably better, but also not any worse. I have been doing the usual routine (heel drops, night splint, etc.), but I'm curious if anyone has a personal experience similar to this

Eccentric heel drops are key, but you need to give the tendon time to heal. The full Alfredson protocol is like 12 weeks? It took me 3 weeks of doing the drops to notice real improvement.

You might be better off skipping the stretches unless they're very gentle. There's some thought that stretching is bad for Achilles issues because it puts a lot of stress on the tendon, which is already in a weakened state.

The last thing that helped me was switching to higher drop shoes until the tendinitis resolved. Some people use heel lifts, but moving from flats to a ~10mm drop shoe helped me a lot.

It never goes away, I have had achilles tendinits/nosis for years and I wake up everyday with an achy achillies. I do stretches and work on it but I really don’t think it will every go away.

itoy wrote:

Does anyone have any experience running through Achilles tendonitis/tendonosis with only morning stiffness? I have morning stiffness that tends to go away after eccentric heel drops and stretching. I can run with zero pain and next to no discomfort. The only issue is the extreme stiffness and dull ache I feel for the first 15 minutes out of bed. I have been running for a month and this hasn't gotten considerably better, but also not any worse. I have been doing the usual routine (heel drops, night splint, etc.), but I'm curious if anyone has a personal experience similar to this

Start doing eccentric calf raises

Good luck. This injury is frustrating.

I think I read almost every Achilles injury thread on this forum when I had it bad. Doing glute strengthening and getting ART done on my calf / Achilles helped get me out of the rut. I’m surprised glute and core work hasn’t been mentioned on this thread yet. I had a gait analysis done and they basically told me my core and hip / glutes were very weak. Make sure your feet aren’t crossing the midline when you land. This is indicative of weak core. I also increased my cadence, which was super low at 160spm to low mid 170s.

I make sure to do a few glute exercises before running. I feel them engaging while runny and I believe it takes some of the strain off of the calf complex. I would also make sure you don’t have an exaggerated forefoot strike.

I’m hesitant to say I’m fixed because it still flares every now and then. Hell, I made my own thread on this a few weeks ago lol. But currently it doesn’t bother me in the morning or when I’m running.

pay close attention to it. If it feels like it’s getting worse 24 hours after exercise, stop running. Heat it before runs, ice after. Make sure you thoroughly warm up, especially if you prefer morning runs. I like to do the drops before and after running. Gradually increase resistance (weight) as you feel better.

Others might disagree, but wearing a shoe with a high heel offset also helped me. I alternate a 5mm with a 10mm shoe now. Any lower than that I really feel it. Tried altras for the wide toe box and it set me back after I thought I was healed. Lol.

Also agree with the poster who said do ankle alphabet before the first step out of bed.

This minor essay is basically my own experience. Yours might be different. Find what helps you.

It's tendinitis... spell the alphabet with your toes. Ain't nothin' but a thing.

I've been struggling with it for a year and a half now. I've done a couple of cycles of eccentric drops, but I often feel like there are annoying secondary effects from them in my foot and hamstring, oddly. But only on my right side (I do the drops on both sides). Maybe there's some other issue on my right leg that leads to these effects.

Anyway, I'm at a point now where I was so frustrated with the lack of progress that I'm resting until my right side feels completely normal. I'm rolling a few times a day but no other exercises due to the aforementioned reasons. It sucks. Like the other poster said, I feel like my choices at this point are either acceptance or an extended (>1 year) break.

I dealt with Achillies issues to varying degrees for 8 years, but I could almost always run through it. In fact, running is good for it, because that area needs blood flow.

Sleeping in a night splint will solve your morning stiffness issue. You also may want to add a pair of running shoes with at least a 9 mm heel drop into your rotation. And, as others have said, the heel drops are an absolute must.