I’m sure you’ve heard of Achilles Tendinitis (sometimes spelled as Achilles Tendonitis). It’s pretty common for runners to get heel pain after running, which can be due to straining or injuring your Achilles tendon.
Unfortunately, amongst active people, including athletes, gym-goers, and in particular, runners like myself, Achilles tendon pain is a common running injury – and used to be the bane of my training blocks.
In this post, I’m sharing the key steps I take to recover quickly from Achilles Tendinitis, including exercises, shoes, and nutrition.
This also includes recovery tools I have bought, and regularly use to alleviate and help reduce soreness in my heel, during and after running, which encourages my body to heal and get stronger in the recovery process.
These tools and techniques are particularly focused on achieving a fast recovery so I can get back to running (and just going about everyday life) without that niggling ache in my heel.
If you’ve had it before, or currently have it, then you know all too well how achilles tendinitis can flare up in the morning after you wake up, during a run, or even after a run during training periods where you’ve just ramped up your distance, intensity, elevation gain, or frequency.
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They also include a couple of tips you may not have seen or heard of in the past (that can also help with a variety of running-related niggles and strains).
If you’ve landed on this page looking for ideas for how you can aid your own running injury recovery, this post should be super useful for you, and will undoubtedly offer some hope and encouragement that you can, and will fix that Achilles heel pain soon!
Ok, let’s dive straight into this post, and get you on the road to recovery, in the FAST lane!
What is Achilles Tendinitis?
Before I get into my roadmap for Achilles tendinitis recovery, let’s take a moment to understand what this injury actually is, what the possible causes are, how long it lasts, whether you should run with it, and the first thing to do if you find yourself getting it.
If your heel hurts after running, it could either be your running shoes rubbing on your heel or worse still, it could be soreness in your Achilles tendon.
If it is your shoes rubbing, that’s an easy fix, buy a good pair of running shoes designed with comfort AND performance in mind – yes they do exist! For trail runners, read our best trail running shoes buyer’s guide next, alternatively, if you’re a road runner check out our best road running shoes buyer’s guide instead.
The Achilles tendon is the large tendon that goes up the back of your heel and connects your calf muscle to your heel bone.
Among runners, pain in the back of your ankle above the heel is often related to an Achilles injury – this is very common among runners so don’t feel dismayed if you’re one of them.
I like to think of it as a rite of passage. 🙂
Achilles heel symptoms are typically aching and soreness in the achilles region.
I also find it can be tender and stiff when I wake up in the morning, requiring some gentle massage, heat treatment, and stretching before I can walk without pain.
I put this down to the reduced circulation of blood around the body as we lay still, asleep.
For more about these types of heel injuries, this post from the Mayo Clinic may also be helpful.
Rather than jumping to conclusions though, consider that there could be other reasons for your heel pain.
This is why it may be important to see a doctor in order to get properly diagnosed.
Other reasons for running-related heel pain include plantar fasciitis and even stress fractures, for example. To learn more about plantar fasciitis visit our runners guide to recovering from plantar fasciitis at home.
What are the causes of Achilles heel pain?
For runners and other active people, it’s likely that your heel aching and soreness is the result of overuse – also known as an ‘overuse injury’.
You probably ran too much, too far, or added too many hills into your training, too soon.
For example, perhaps you’re training for a marathon or 50k ultramarathon, but increased your weekly distance too quickly, or did too many runs without sufficient recovery in between.
Or maybe you’re a new runner, you just started running and increasing your mileage and speed, did a load of intensive interval training without adequate recovery time, or are getting into longer-distance hiking and similar activities involving a lot of steps, hills, and time on your feet.
Here at Trail & Kale, we have curious minds and adventurous spirits. This has led us to try some of the most challenging (physically and mentally) events and sports around the world.
As a result of taking on new challenges, we’ve also been hit with some of the most common running or sports injuries including blisters on our feet, shin splints, lower back pain when running, Achilles tendinitis, and the dreaded plantar fasciitis.
Of course, there’s a silver lining here, and that is that our curious minds have been able to seek out the best advice from physios and the web in order to recover from our injuries.
The Achilles tendon can easily be strained in any of these scenarios, among others if you don’t look after it, and follow an appropriate training plan.
For example, I find that I can start to get Achilles pain from running when I:
- run too many hill reps too intensively (running up and down hill intervals and up steps strains the tendon more than running on flat pavement).
- am generally physically tired. If I have weaker glutes, hamstrings, and tired calf muscles from an intensive week or month of running and racing, this can result in excess strain on my Achilles tendon due to bad running form. Here’s how to run with good form and reduce the chance of getting injuries, if you’re wondering.
- wear certain running shoes that aren’t best suited to my feet and running style.
As reviewing outdoor gear, including road and trail running shoes, is a big part of what we do here at Trail & Kale then it’s not surprising that my choice of footwear can contribute to heel pain – it’s an occupational hazard, of sorts!
In my experience, I have only ever strained my Achilles on not done any serious damage.
I have not pushed it to the extent the injury has gone beyond mild or moderate symptoms of soreness and aching.
This is because I don’t want to have such a bad injury that I tear my tendon or rupture it such that it needs to be fixed surgically and I wouldn’t be able to walk or run for weeks.
That would be no bueno.
It’s important to note that pushing it too far and not seeking help from a doctor will likely make the issue worse, and can run the risk of you tearing or rupturing the tendon.
A serious injury such as this will definitely stop you running until you get it fixed – which often means surgery. Ouch.
How long does Achilles Tendinitis last?
A common question you may have is ‘how long is the recovery time?’.
The answer is, of course, it depends.
To learn how to best recover from this injury I did extensive research into the amount of healing time, including rest and recovery you may need to treat the soreness.
And most importantly, how to stop the injury from happening again.
My steps for treating heel pain that I explain later in this post are tried and tested to ensure I recover as quickly as possible whenever I experience the issue.
This means that I can get back to running quickly without too much detrimental impact on my running training.
By applying these, it can take as little as a couple of weeks, to well over a month for me to be able to get back to running again, depending on how bad the strain and soreness is to start with.
Running with Achilles heel pain
The main point to note is that if you have heel pain and you’re a runner, then perhaps you’ve continued to run on it in the hope thats it will just get better.
If you do that, then it’s hard to see how your body is going to be able to recover from the injury.
You need to give your body a break to recover, and some physical therapy, to help the issue improve.
What to do if you suspect you have Achilles Tendinitis
Ok, so you suspect your issue is with your Achilles so you want to know how to heal and stop getting that pain – that’s why you’re here, right?!
Before you read on to learn how I treat myself to recover quickly, remember that I’m not a doctor, nor am I a physical therapist.
So, definitely seek out a professional before doing anything else, so that they can help you diagnose your injury and get the best treatment for your personal needs.
How I treat Achille’s Tendinitis, fast
In this section I explain :
- The specific ways I treat the heel pain that I can get during or after running. This includes simple injury rehab steps, cross-training exercises, stretches and tools I use to recover quickly
- How I know when I’ve recovered enough to be able to start running again without making it worse
- What shoes I choose to help manage and alleviate heel pain while running.
This is quite a long post, so grab a drink and settle in for the read.
There’s also a video of me sharing some of these tips at the bottom of this post, if you’d like to watch that afterwards! Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel! 🙂
Okay, here are my 8 tips and tricks that help me recover from an Achilles tendinitis injury:
1. Stop running to allow your body to recover
The first thing to do is to stop running!
That sounds pretty obvious but actually, this is the best thing you can do if you’re feeling Achilles tendon pain. It’s not going to get better with you running on it.
You need to recover enough to get it to a manageable point before you can try running again. I explain later how I know when I’m ready to do that.