Tendon Recovery Time

Hi All,

I was curious to know if there were general guidelines on how long it takes tendons to recover after a workout. Searching these forums and google only comes up with lots of posts about tendon recovery after injury. I am not asking about that. I am specifically asking about the regular stress they are put under from a single workout. I know that it will probably be slightly different for everyone, but given that tendons do not receive as much bloodlflow as muscles, they must take longer to recover, correct?

For example, when i do a heavy weighted workout between 3-5 reps, I may be sore (muscles) for 3 full days afterwards before I feel like my muscles are fresh enough to go again (i never feel "sore" in my tendons - probably because they have less nerve pathways). Taking into account the heavy load on tendons in a lot of gymnastics movements, would it be reasonable to say that it might take twice as long for them to be fresh again? Can I use my awareness of my muscle recovery to help give a general estimate of how long my tendons need to recover between workouts?

The reason I am asking is twofold. I want to focus my training on a specific movement - the muscle-up. I know that my elbow tendons need to be strengthened and I am starting with the appropriate progressions and will use the steady state system to avoid overtraining - but I need to have a general guideline of how many times per week I would be doing a specific workout targeting these tendons. For example, do they need 2 days recovery between workouts, 7 days, etc?

The second reason is that I am curious about coach Sommer's 4-day per week training schedule laid out in the book. I feel like this could be too much volume for a beginner, even with working the correct progressions. For example, I may work a very basic progression for the front lever, but then if the next day I am doing something for handstands, that is two back-to back days that the arms are heavily involved (I know they are targeting different primary muscles, but the arms are used both days)

In closing, I am sure much of this is should be based around a "go with how you feel, listen to your body" type of thing, which I am very good at, but I was just curious if there were some basic guidelines to keep in mind with training tendons specifically.

Thanks!

Xixor

The reason I am asking is twofold. I want to focus my training on a specific movement - the muscle-up. I know that my elbow tendons need to be strengthened and I am starting with the appropriate progressions and will use the steady state system to avoid overtraining - but I need to have a general guideline of how many times per week I would be doing a specific workout targeting these tendons. For example, do they need 2 days recovery between workouts, 7 days, etc?

I'm an expert...not at doing a muscle-up...at overdoing my tendons. Things I've learned:

(1) there is no set number of days between workouts, it's individual

(2) you need to truly learn and understand the principles of SSC

(3) your tendons should feel clean and soreness-free by the time your next workout day arrives

(4) you may need to hold workouts to 2x per week and gradually work your way up to 4x per week

(5) prehab joints 1x per week on an 8-12 week SSC

(6) IMHO, because of the risk on my joints, I'm not going to work on muscle-ups until I can do...5 consecutive full ROM pull-ups with rings at chest level with a controlled tempo...5 full weight dips with full ROM (thumbs at armpit)...5-10 russian dips on PB at tempo. But honestly, if you can do all 3 of those things, you don't need to "work" on your muscle-up. You can basically already do them.

I didn't know this stuff beforehand, and I was used to working out 4-5x per week with weights. I wasted almost 9 months of reinjury and recovery from overuse. But since I started working gradually since February/March, I'm at the longest stretch of gymnastic training injury-free since I've started. It probably won't be until December that I'm doing full workouts 4x per week, and I'm keeping intensity steady by doing the same rep count per exercise and just working on gradually increasing number of sets and frequency of the workouts.

Kind of humbling to think I'm not going to up the reps or intensity of any exercise for 6 more months. But at the same time, I finally feel like I have an exercise pace that my body can live with and sustain.

Take it slow. All you have to do is what Coach recommends: Use SSC. For higher leverage movements 4-6 weeks is a good SSC time and for straight AND bent arm lower leverage movements (and ANYthing that is limited by connective tissue development) needs to be done on a 12 week SSC with moderate progression from one cycle to the next. Everything from bodyweight to arm length to everything else that can possibly vary from person to person will influence how quickly you progress and how much resistance to add to your next SSC.

Your worst results will come when you start focusing on one movement. Your best results will come when you just focus on preparing all your joints, because this inherently builds a body that can handle that movement (muscle up, for you) as well as much more and does so without missing anything. That's why your main conditioning should be the WODs and your warm up should be specific joint prep. That is part of what the FSP prerequisites accomplish, but for your elbows I would add in diamond (close grip) push ups. They create the same arm angle as the muscle up at the elbow with FAR less resistance and will serve as a good place to start your muscle up elbow prep.

Edit: DO NOT FORGET TO DO YOUR SHOULDER PREHAB! Also remember to focus on joint prehab in general, that is the most important thing you can do for your strength development.