Your patella tendon and sports performance training. Your patella tendon is located directly below your kneecap and it attaches your kneecap to your patella (shinbone). This tendon more than most for athletes in sports that require a lot of jumping and explosiveness tends to get irritated. The irritation you feel it’s called tendonitis. This comes from a rapid uptick in workload mixed with a lot of jumping and landing. The pain and damage done to this tendon are done upon landing from jumps and running. Typically sports that are closely associated with jumping see a lot of injury to the patella tendon. Sports like basketball volleyball etc. Sports performance training if done properly can help this. By that same token sports performance, training can accentuate the pain. A quick disclaimer just because it accentuates pain doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done it might mean that your dosage and your overall activity level should be changed to accommodate your needs. As we talked about previous article sports performance training is very important when it comes to athletic development and this obviously stands true for basketball volleyball and other jumping-related sports. So how do you perform sports to require a lot of jumping without causing injury to the patella tendon what some of that comes with progressive workload over time and not a dramatic uptick some of it is from landing mechanics and some of it is just from what you do on a day-to-day basis. When it comes to what you do on a day-to-day basis you need to be sure that the activities you’re participating in are going directly towards your goals if you’re spending your day training skill base for the sport and then doing sports performance training and then you’re going home and messing around doing a bunch of jumping running playing well you could see an uptick in your pain that you feel because of overall workload and it is only being accentuated by the things that you’re doing that are important which is just jumping and playing around. My number one thing I talk to athletes about first is to take away all unnecessary jumping and landing if you’re just playing around for fun without really focusing and getting quality wraps in and it’s causing pain we should take that out immediately before we take out any schoolwork or sports performance training work. Landing mechanics is another area where we can see issues arise in the patella tendon. If we land stiff and hard on the knees it’s a good indicator that we’re going to have some knee pain of some sort because of constant pounding and constant landing with his proper form. I Will have an entire article on this later but simply anytime we are landing we need to be sure that we’re decompressing into a squat and not just landing stiff legs and bouncing straight out of it. There are many ways to land but there are so many wrong ways to land. The other and probably the most quintessential reason people see patellar tendon pain is because of the spike in overall workload more often than not as athletes you go from the dead. We’re not doing a lot to a high peak in terms of what you’re doing whether it’s when you mature and you get to the point where you’re taking the sport seriously or if you took a whole off-season off and I’m just coming back into the swing of things. People like going 0 to 100 but your knees don’t. When it comes to getting back into sports performance training skill training for that sport or just overall activity level a gradual increase is ideal. The issue is a lot of athletes will perform sports performance training which is a big spike in the overall activity level on their knees and then from soreness, they’ll take a week off and then repeat the exact same continuous pattern was just increases the likelihood of the Talton in pain because of spikes and activity level. If you’re looking at starting sports performance training or skill training start gradually work your way up to a high maximal level to where your tendons joints and body can adapt with you. As humans, we’re built to adapt but our ability to adapt is instantaneous and takes time make sure you give your body the time when it comes to sports performance training or any other type of training to adapt and get better. If you are someone who suffers from patella tendinitis or someone who’s looking to get into sports performance training please contact us or training at Next Level Athletics it’s not only beneficial for building overall athleticism but a sports performance training teaches landing mechanics, as well as preventative exercises, tell decrease the amount of knee pain you have and strengthen your tendons overall.
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