Exploring the Complexity of Tendinopathy Treatment for Elbow and Patellar Tendinopathies

Dr. Cody Gingerich // #ClinicalTuesday // www.ptonice.com 

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Extremity Division lead faculty Cody Gingerich discusses details that can be easily missed when treating out tendinopathy!

Take a listen to the episode or check out the full show notes on our blog at www.ptonice.com/blog.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

INTRODUCTION Good morning, PT on ICE. My name is Cody Gingerich. I'm one of the lead faculty in our extremity division. And I'm coming on here today to talk about the hidden details of tendinopathies. Um, so in our extremity management course, we cover tendinopathy. We have an entire lecture on day two, as detailed as we can on tendinopathies. But what we know is tendinopathies in general are incredibly difficult to treat. Um, they last a long time. There are a lot, a lot of different variables that you have to constantly be playing with in order to really treat these people out and get them all the way back better and feeling good. And sometimes in an hour, hour and a half long lecture, we still can't cover everything that we, uh, possibly know about tendinopathies. And so I want to cover some today, just some of the hidden details of tendinopathies, things to look out for, and just a couple like additional clinical pearls, um, that may help you next time you're working with someone that has some tendinopathy going on. And there's a couple of different areas that I want to specifically address, and that's going to be more so like elbow tendinopathy. So think medial lateral epicondylalgia or tendinopathy in general. Um, and then patellar tendinopathy as well. Those just tend to be some areas that are pretty common. And so the first thing that I want to really emphasize with tendinopathy is looking at why the additional stress is happening to that tendon. So what we know about tendinopathy up front is that it is a chronic overuse injury, right? It could be acute, but typically it's gonna be in a chronic situation. And that means that that tendon is not doing the capacity or the work that you are asking of it. Okay. If it is an acute situation, a lot of times that is just negligence on that human and saying like, let's say, you know, for an Achilles tendinopathy or a patellar tendinopathy, let's say, you know, they haven't played basketball in 10 years and they decided that over one weekend they wanted to play, you know, two days straight of basketball. And it's pretty reasonable in that situation to be like, well, yeah, your patellar tendon couldn't handle all of that jumping and running that you were doing all at once. And so it's reasonable to think that a tendinopathy could accrue. And that's not necessarily something where you have to really look at like, all right, well, why is this happening? That's just pretty clear on like, well, that person just, you know, blew past their acute to chronic workload ratio. But oftentimes that's not how these things pop up and it's over time and they are long lasting and they are lingering and things like that. And that's the point where we need to really look at, okay, we definitely know that that tenant is not able to keep up with what we're asking of it. But why is it doing so much work that it is getting overused, right? Is there a movement pattern that they are doing that is potentially faulty? Is there a weakness somewhere else that we need to address and that tendon and that those tissues are just taking up more of the slack for a weakness elsewhere? And that's really where I want to hone in today. Because the other thing that we know about tendinopathies is it's pretty much a bullseye when those people come into your clinic and they say, hey, I have pain right here, or they point right to their patellar tendon. That can very quickly tunnel vision us into saying, okay, cool, I need to do wrist extensions, we need to build up that tendon, we need to do isometrics, we need to do eccentrics, we need to do heavy, slow concentrics, we need to really go after that tendon. And that can just pigeonhole us at that spot because it is such a bullseye when those patients tell you, this is where it hurts. And you're like, cool, I know where that is. I know what's happening. We need to get that tendon stronger. And that is true. But there are also other factors involved as to why that thing got pissed off in the first place. So we have those isometrics to help pull pain down and we need to address the tissue that hurts. but additionally addressing why it's doing that, right? And so in the fitness space where there is a lot of like grip heavy things and we see tendinopathies at the elbow, what I see frequently, there's two real things that we need to look out for as far as like those hidden details. One of those is shoulder capacity. How much shoulder capacity do they have? And are they trying to make up their lack of shoulder capacity with hanging on for dear life onto the rig, onto a barbell, onto a dumbbell or whatever, because that is now where they feel like their power is coming from. And that is causing some overuse because their shoulder capacity is not at an ability to really handle all of the things they're doing. And so that leaks down the chain to the elbow, wrist or hand. The other thing that I see very commonly, specifically when dealing with medial elbow tendinopathy, is that a lot of times people with generally weaker grip tend to try and make their grip stronger by doing this like false grip. And that is what is taught and what is appropriate in weightlifting. If you're doing dead lifting, cleaning, snatching, we want knuckles down. And that puts us into a position like this. If we are hanging or doing gymnastics movements, we want knuckles over the bar like this. What that does is every then movement, they then grab a kettlebell for a farmer's carry. They're gonna hook grip it like this. What happens is they're always using this, rarely getting the actual capacity to the other side of their forearm and those gripping muscles. We know the strongest grip is going to be in a little bit of wrist extension as well. And so then we can start pulling out like, well, in your workouts or in your day-to-day life when you're gripping things, I want you to actually start to pay attention to some of your traditional grip and let's see if we can't utilize some of our wrist extensors a little more when you're going to grab a door, when you're going to pick up things like hey let's get our knuckles back a little bit and now all of a sudden instead of just consistently trying to like hammer this tendon and get it stronger, we got to get it stronger, it's like well Yes, we can get it stronger, but we can also help to pull some of that tension and some of that irritation and overall use back to help it calm down. And that's the big thing is like tendinopathy, we want to improve the capacity because that's what overall needs to happen. But if we can improve the capacity while also taking away some of the work that that tendon overall has to do, now we're going both directions at the same time and pushing them forward faster. Right? And so that then leads to like, we're asking less of the tendon and it's getting stronger at the same time. So then that tendon can start that healing process a little bit faster. Okay. A similar thing can happen at the knee. where we have patellar teninopathy. But if you watch that person move, and they are trying to squat, and they are trying to push press, or power clean, or things like that, and they have a bit of a muted hip, where they are not using their hips effectively, and most of that work ends up coming through the quads, that's another situation where Yes, that patellar tendon needs some work and it can improve the overall capacity, but if you don't help that person and coach that person's overall movement pattern, they're going to consistently continue to aggravate that tendon. Whereas their hips should be the most powerful thing that is producing force, right? So get them into a little bit more of that posterior chain, get them using their glutes out of the bottom of the squat, get them using their hips when they're doing it in a power position, when they're doing push press. The examples are numerous where we want people to start using the hips and take away some of the stress from that patellar tendon while you are doing all of the additional isometrics, wall sits, Spanish squats, heavy slow concentric, cyclist squats. These are all great. But sometimes we also want to pull down some of the stress that those tendons are taking on and relearn some movement patterns that could be contributing to this longstanding tendinopathy. Sometimes that might mean adjusting their squat stance a little bit or their deadlift stance, just getting them used to using their hips a little bit more effectively while you're treating out that tendinopathy. So that's going to be one of the really big ways is like, don't get tunnel vision on. We need to strengthen, strengthen, strengthen, strengthen, and don't look elsewhere. Because a lot of times with these chronic tendinopathies, there is a reason there is a weakness in the chain somewhere. There is a weakness in movement pattern where that is causing the overuse of that tendon to happen. So simultaneously, while you're trying to decrease pain at that tendon via some strength training, some isometrics, building that tendon capacity, we also want to be working and trying to figure out, well, what is the underlying cause of why we're overusing this tendon in the first place? So I really want to emphasize that today. The other factor that sometimes gets overlooked in tendinopathy is going to be compression and speed of the tendon and what it is doing and in what space is it operating. So every tendon is going to pass by a bony prominence. That is where the bony attachment is going to be. And anytime we are working through tendinopathies, we want to appreciate that compression that happens in whatever exercise you choose to do. So if we're talking about a patellar tendinopathy, the deeper that person gets into their squat position, the more compression that patellar tendon is going to go under. Same thing when we are doing, if we were doing elbow or wrist exercises, the more that we stretch that tendon, if we straighten our arm, that will, and then extend or flex our wrist, that will put that tendon over more compression around your epicondyles. And that exists for pretty much every tendon in the body. And so Being able to navigate that variable and pull some of those different exercises out or changing exercises, it's not always necessarily that the exercise is wrong, but maybe the range of motion can be adjusted because that tendon can't tolerate the current compression that it is under. Okay. Finally, the speed. The speed is where tendons really hit kind of a fork in the road on what can it tolerate. So we like to live up front with isometrics, concentrics, heavy, slow building blocks of the tendon, but ultimately most tendons get aggravated under speed. So if you think you're runners and you're jumpers and you're throwers If you're crossfitters, where they're pulling a lot under speed on the bar, that's usually where those tendinopathies occur. Quick wrist movements, all of those type of things. And that ends up becoming the aggravating thing. So if we don't end up building in more speed, we aren't going to end up being able to get them all the way through their plan of care. And so that can start with using a metronome, right? So you can track how is this tendon tolerating speed. So you go a 60 beats per minute on whatever exercise you're trying to do. Then you go to 70 beats per minute or 80 or you start, you know, that's where you can very easily track and then you can start getting back into their actual functional movement with speed and knowing that it can tolerate certain levels of that speed. So overall, I saw a question here, stretching the tendon equals compression. Essentially, yes. That is a good way to think about it. If you are stretching the tendon, you are pretty much adding compression around those bony prominences most times. That's gonna be a pretty accurate statement for most of those tendons. Wrapping it around whatever bony prominence is adding compression, and most of the time that's gonna be if you're stretching it. And that becomes typically a more aggravating position for most tendons. SUMMARY So overall, the three really main things that I want to point out as far as additional details to tendinopathies that you don't want to forget about when you're treating tendinopathies. The first one is why specifically is that tendon getting irritated and getting overused in the first point? That is oftentimes going to be a weakness up the chain somewhere or potentially a movement pattern fault that you want to coach out. You want to look at, get your eyes on how they're moving and can we decrease stressors and get change some of that movement pattern while we are treating out the tendinopathy. Number two is going to be really paying attention to the compression around that tendon. Can we change or adjust range of motion of that exercise to help improve some of that compression or potentially add compression if they can tolerate it? finally is going to be speed. If you need to really truly know we are building them out through that full plan of care, getting them back to functional sport activity, you have to get them into speed. And I would track that with a metronome or something like that. So, you know, for a fact that that tendon is able to tolerate more speed, that's going to be more likely to reflect the activity that they are doing. Okay, that's all I've got for you today. Just wanted to touch on a couple different points of tendinopathy. As far as catching extremity management on the road, we've got a couple courses coming up later this month. So we have a course this coming week, looks pretty full out in Kent, Washington. Next weekend, we are in Henderson, Tennessee, couple seats open there. And then in July 27th, 28th, Bend, Oregon. So pretty much all across the country, we've got courses coming to you. from the extremity management. Would love to see you out on the road. Thanks for watching.

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