TENDONITIS
Tendonitis, sometimes known as tendinosis, is a common sports injury. Excessive training and overuse or repetitive action of a particular joint or group of joints (known as overuse syndrome), may result in pain and dysfunction.
If you are a golfer or tennis player, for example, you repeatedly swing your arms in a consistent movement each time to make a shot. Doing the same kinds of movements every day or putting stress on joints only a few times a week increases your risk of tendon damage. Dancing, bicycling, and running can cause overuse, stretching, tearing, and swelling of tendons in your legs. Basketball players can develop jumper’s knee, where overuse of the muscles and the force of hitting the ground after jumping strains the tendons in the knee. Gardeners, carpenters, and musicians can develop tendonitis, but the risk for the condition is greater among athletes.
Tendonitis often develops in the muscle groups moving the joints of the shoulders, biceps, hands, wrists, and thumbs, but can also occur in the tendons in your calves.
Tendonitis can be very painful and debilitating, especially when it affects a major muscle or important muscle group. It can affect the connective tissue on the outside of your elbow to cause tennis elbow, for example, or inflammation may occur in the tendons on the inside of the elbow to cause golfer’s elbow.
R&R TIP: Your chances of developing tendonitis increase, as you get older. Regular stretching and therapeutic exercise like gentle yoga are key to maintaining flexibility as we age.
