The Essential Guide to Tendon Conditioning for Building Strength and Avoiding Injury

If you're serious about lifting heavy, building muscle, and achieving peak strength, tendon conditioning is something you can’t overlook. It not only plays a critical role in helping you lift heavier loads, but most importantly stabilize joints and prevent serious injuries that can sideline you for months.

What is tendon conditioning and why does it matter?

Although muscle growth and strength gains are often the focus of training, your tendons are what connects the muscle to the bone. Without healthy tendons, you’re putting your body at risk every time you load up the barbell.

‘But won’t tendons get conditioned while I lift weights?’

They do to a degree, but while your muscles might adapt relatively quickly to the demands of resistance training, tendons are a bit slower in the game. They a lot more time and a lot more reps to get the blood flowing there.

This is because they’re not as vascular as muscles, meaning they receive less blood flow, and thus, take longer to recover and adapt. This means you need to adapt your training to accommodate the demands they require.

Now that you understand the importance of tendon conditioning, let’s look at some effective exercises to incorporate into your training.

These exercises focus on building tendon strength gradually, so they’re safe and manageable, even if you’re new to this approach.

1. Slow and heavy eccentric loading⁽¹⁾.

Eccentric movements—where the muscle lengthens under tension—place a lot of stress on your tendons, helping them adapt and grow stronger. The key is using greater than 70% of your maximum weight⁽¹⁾.

You can use a variety of tools including barbells, dumbbells, and more to perform eccentric loading for nearly any exercise you can imagine to strengthen your ankles, your wrists, and everything in between.

Slowing down the tempo of your lifts increases time under tension, providing your tendons more of a challenge. Start with 3-5 seconds of controlled lowering and increase time and/or weight as you get stronger. You can perform eccentric only exercises by having someone spot you and lift the weight up for you.

2. Isometric holds.

Isometric holds help condition tendons by placing them under constant tension without changing the muscle length. Adding holds to key movements can make a big difference in tendon strength⁽²⁾ and knee pain⁽³⁾. Training isometric holds at different joint angles can help build strength and stability throughout the full range of motion. One example is a wall sit.

By adjusting yourself up and down the wall you change the angle of the knee joint, building strength throughout. Dead hangs are great for strengthening the shoulder joint.

3. Resistance bands for joint stabilization.

Resistance bands are great for tendon conditioning⁽⁴⁾ as they create variable resistance, engaging the stabilizer muscles and tendons. You can use them for isometric holds, eccentric training, and more.

They are easy to adjust tension, easy to carry and travel with, and can provide a stimulus to improve stability and mobility, especially for your shoulders.

Building muscle and lifting heavy is only part of the equation.

Tendon conditioning is a foundational element that helps build a durable, resilient body that can take on any challenge, but it often gets overlooked until an injury.

Don’t let it be you!

The good news is that you don’t need to dedicate entire training days to tendon conditioning. Just a few minutes every day can work wonders and build capacity quickly. Try adding a couple of the exercises outlined above to the beginning of your regular workout sessions, especially on days when you’re focusing on heavy lifts.

PRO TIP: ISO holds make great exercises to superset with!

By adding a few simple exercises to your routine, you’ll build healthier tendons that can keep up with your growing strength and size goals, and keep you in the game for years to come.

If you want to get the most out of every rep and maximize your tendon conditioning and resilience building potential, consider adding HYPERBOLIC to your daily training routine.

HYPERBOLIC is specifically formulated for individuals looking to put on size, and maintain as much anabolism as possible pre, intra, and post workout.  

HYPERBOLIC consists of over 40 different compounds with a heavy emphasis of maximizing performance and recovery from activities such as weightlifting, bodybuilding, strongman, and similar styles of training. It's the pros' secret weapon!

References:

(1) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9124646/

(2) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7406028/

(3) https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/19/1277

(4) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37414406/