Eccentric Loading for Tendons

It's about a month since "it" happened, and my mileage has plummeted from ~140 miles per week to closer to 5-10. I would give my leg time off, generally three to four days of only light walking and then try to reintroduce my fifteen minute bicycle ride to school only to be answered with a very mild discomfort. I hesitate to describe it as pain, but something telling you that things are going wrong. If I were to increase the mileage, pain would start, but that telling feeling of something being wrong in the tendon was always the precursor.

So, last Friday I saw the physical therapist, Kevin, who showed me a way to eccentrically loading my quad. As an engineering student, eccentric to me means off-center, such as a column loaded to one side of it's centerline. Apparently no one told this to physical therapists, because to them it means differential loading; twice the weight on muscle expansion as on contraction. You start out in the typical gym quadricep machine, the one where you lift both of your feet up to raise the weight. This time, instead of lowering normally you only use the injured leg to lower the weight, making it work twice as hard on the way down as it did on the way up. This type of exercise has had great success with chronic tendon injuries in runners, though Kevin didn't know of many experience with cyclists and quad tendons or with injuries less than 4 weeks old. Still, the principal is the same and CT scans in test subjects show a re-organization of tendon fibers in their normal direction, from the injured chaotic state of many directions.

Kevin warned that my leg would be extremely sore for two to three days, which I sort of brushed off with a sense of pride in my once chiseled leg. However, today is Sunday and it remains as sore as yesterday so something is clearly working. Surprisingly, the heavy lifting didn't seem to hurt the tendon and it hasn't complained all weekend; though I haven't been very active either.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to ride to school and get another session in. I'll keep updating on my progress.