Better for achilles tendonitis: minimal shoe or shoe with elevated heel/superfeet

I initially put heel lifts in. Ran on grass. That was lame and lasted about a week. I then wore normal trainers. I then very slowly went from trainers to more minimal footwear, BUT I pretty well avoided flat heel-to-toe offsets. Maybe your Achilles problem was a freak tear/pull/stretch, but more than likely you have a lifetime of wearing built-up shoes that you'll have a hell of a time reversing now that you're beyond puberty.

If you run very conservatively and take a lot of time to recover between running attempts and actual runs, then you'll probably get away with doing either. I think your best bet is to get ample heel lift until the Achilles has time to heal. Then test how well you can stretch/lengthen things.

Lots of people will disagree because they've done it a certain way. My personal experience is that going minimal was fine, so long as I still wore shoes with a decent heel offset.

I thought the Cumulus was soft when I wore it. I think soft shoes are bad. They let your foot sink and do things in one direction when your gait is trying to take you another direction. Better to have a flexible shoe without too soft of an insole. And then just run in grass while you're recovering.

Look for shoes with a comfortable heel counter or lack thereof. Even the wrong rub on the heel can irritate the Achilles enough that it doesn't heal as quickly.

Pain is bad. Don't do anything if you have pain or can't get your Achilles/calves limber. I would go out every day and try to limber up and jog. If I didn't feel good, I would stop. It's like that for a week or two, but after a few weeks you will probably find it okay to do some jogging and then things start to come back very quickly after that, but this will bother you for a year or forever. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Warmth promotes bloodflow. Cold slows inflammation. You'll probably need both. Warmth is better before exercising and cold is better after. Hot and freezing are too extreme. Massaging is probably better than stretching, but both are good when done lightly. I hesitate to say any of this, because it's really easy to overdo any of these things.

Stay hydrated with an even mix of electrolytes and such.

In conclusion, I'm rambling. But I recommend keeping your heels slightly elevated until the heel isn't the problem. Once your knees or something else hurt more, you've made progress! It's a balance. The important thing is that the Achilles needs bloodflow to heal, so just sitting around isn't doing anything to heal it.

The key to overcoming achilles tendonitis for me is wearing a night splint to bed. Over some fifty-five years of running, I have always needed about six weeks to recover from my nearly annual Achilles injuries. But using a night splint I came back from an Achilles breakdown at a Turkey Trot by the 1st of December a week later. I have run more than 100 miles since then, half uphill.

The "night splint" prevents your Achilles from tightening up during sleep. It does not bother you while you sleep.

It's probably caused from tight Hip flexors. Shoes have nothing to do with it. It is simply an overuse injury where your muscles tighten up and the pain is referred to the weakest link which may be the achilles, calf muscle, hamstrings, etc.

My achilles pain got better (and my PF, too) when I put Superfeet green and little gel heel pads in my shoes. I've been using this combination for years and I don't have any problems anymore for the most part, except when my mileage gets really high (for me, about 100-120 mpw). These are the heel pads I use:

http://www.drscholls.com/drscholls/productSearch.do?method=doProductDetailsLookup&searchArg=48

I usually get them at Walgreens.

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This is how it goes for achilles tendonitis and I. I've been training exclusively in racing flats with a low heel for 7 years now. Inevitably when I start to build up my mileage, my achilles starts hurting like hell all the time. The first few times this happened, I listened to my coach and stopped running for awhile but as soon as I started back up it would hurt again. I went through this shitty cycle a couple of times until I just said f*** it. When it started hurting, I just blocked it out and continued to progress my mileage and intensity. After a couple weeks of this it went away. I have no clue why this "sucking it up" method works for me but it just does. I would in no way recommend this to you but it may besomething to think about. It's most likely that I'm just an idiot and the thing is going to snap when I'm 30.

There is a certain amount of "suck up" that we all need for various pains and things. I'm more careful with my achilles than most other things.

I've learned that stretching indirectly, the calf, hammies, etc., plus deep massaging the calves as far down as possible, clears things up very, very quickly. I rarely take a day off anymore when my achilles starts to hurt. Extra stretching and massage does the trick.

I like to stress the "indirect" part of the stretch and massage. I think it's bad to target the achilles directly after it's already hurting. Also, ice bathing seems to help.

A struggled for a couple of years in college with AT. I found that:

Over the long haul, more minimal shoes were better, but it was imprudent to use them when the Achilles was flaring up

A night splint helps a lot

Total rest rarely works. I needed to keep some level of stress on the thing to promote healing

Strengthening my quads/gluts/hammies/balance exercises is important. Strengthening your calfs can be helpful, but is hard to do while you its hurting

It can drive you nuts, and at some point it can become a mental ailment just as much as a physical one. Now that I'm out of school and don't care as much, I just run through some of the achilles soreness, and it usually goes away as long as I avoid hills, workouts and do more strenghtening stuff

good luck. its a bear

both or neither could work--depends on whats causing it dude...

think about it, how can you fix the problem when you don't know what's causing it?

Should've included this before but I also use eccentric calf raises when it starts to hurt. Come to think of it now, I probably wouldn't have a problem if I was motivated enough to do them daily.

It's not the shoe; it's the insole inside the shoe. Find what works for you. For me it was a lot of gel with more arch support for my high arches. Soak your feet as many times a day in the ice bath and do the soleus (bent knee) wall push stretch 8 or more times a day with a little exercie each time. You can also massage with 1 percent hydrocortisone. Worked for me- got rid of my achilles tendonitis in approx. 1 month and didn't have to stop running.