Muscles, Tendons and Ligaments

These feeling and questions are great when trying to identify the cause of your symptoms.

Muscles have a tendon on each end which attach to a bone. Ligaments attach one bone to another bone. When you injury a muscle this will affect both ends of the muscle, both tendons, the bones they attach to, and any joints they go across. Muscles are full of blood so their healing is quick, often 10 days to a fairly high level if allowed to heal.

However tendons and ligaments have very poor blood supply, but are much more robust. After repetitive strain, tendons and ligaments will respond with inflammation as an attempt to grow bigger due to the excessive stress they are withstanding. Tendons and ligaments often have very small spaces they need to move within, so becoming thicker will cause problems.

Ensuring your joints are in optimal neutral resting positions with full range of motion, will significantly decrease the resting load on the tendons. Neutral joint positions will completely offload ligaments and allow them to heal. This can be done initially with taping or bracing but lengthening and strengthening the surrounding muscles and tendons will preserve the joint space long term.