Sunday 3 February 2013

Eccentric Heel Drop Exercise Protocol

It is out with Joe Friel and down with hear rate monitors. The new fitness regime for me is centred around the Eccentric Heel Drop Exercise Protocol. Sadly this is not going to turn me into a world beating athlete. It won't knock five minutes off my 10k time. It isn't even a weird tip for getting of belly fat.

It should help strengthen and repair my achilles tendon though and get me back to running again. For that reason I am doing my exercises every day, even though they are very dull and quite painful. I have two exercises to do. Both involve standing on a step on the toes of my bad leg and slowly lowering my body weight. Only lowering mind you. Raising back up is to be done by the good leg. For the gastocnemius drop I do the lowering with a straight leg and for the soleus drop (the one that hurts me more) I have a slightly bent leg. The protocol dictates three sets of fifteen repetitions twice a day.

Due to the location of the damage to my tendon the soleus drops cause more pain than the gastocnemius ones. This is because they hit the damaged area more so are actually giving more benefit as well. It is all very dull though and isn't at all what I want to be doing. But if that is what it takes then that is what I shall do.

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