The most important thing you can do is to seek treatment early. Typically most athletes will ignore it for a few weeks hoping it will get better (it usually doesn’t..) and push through the discomfort. This tends to make matters worse as we know that early intervention is the key to treating this stubborn condition. Often the initial treatment involves managing it like any acute inflammatory condition with ice, rest, compression and light treatment. However commonly I see patients who have had the condition for many months and it has crossed over to become chronic. This becomes much harder to treat and takes much longer to resolve. There is no doubt Chris Judd has access to the best care for injury management but even elite athletes will ignore the early signs and continue to train and play despite significant discomfort. Judd has since had to have surgery on his Achilles (reportedly 3 different techniques were used) as this became the only option when conservative management had failed.
For most of us who don’t have access to round-the-clock rehab consultants we need to be more proactive in recognising an issue and seeking immediate treatment. If picked up in the early stages, Achilles tendinitis is relatively straightforward to treat with a good prognosis. However when it becomes chronic you may have to deal with some significant time on the sidelines!
Andrew Maitland is a sports podiatrist at Melbourne Podiatry Clinic. Having worked closely with many elite and amateur runners over the years he has helped many people in the prevention and treatment of running injuries.
