What is Achilles tendinopathy? Achilles tendon is a painful tendon often in the absence of obvious damage. This can come on gradually in response to starting new activity, early in the season or increasing your training load. Often there is a fair chunk of bad luck. How it generally presents is a bit of stiffness in the morning after activity, it can be sort of touch, and sometimes it can warm up and feel better with activity as well. It’s often not too bad at the start and gets ignored, but it gets much worse with time, and harder to manage.

It’s important to know that an Achilles tendinopathy doesn’t increase your chances of a rupture. So while damaging it is unlikely, left unmanaged your body will shut down your exercise capacity fairly significantly. Tendons also take a long time to recover, so earlier is better. Treatment involves looking at factors like running, footwear, strength and capacity and training loads and working out a rehab plan based on building you back up and get you back to the level that you were previously, with no pain.