Inverted suspension with gravity boots

I have a pair of gravity boots (the type that squeezes around the lower leg above the ankle and lets you hang from a HB with hooks) that I never used.

The last 3 years of training have taught me that I am prone to tendon injury, and I am a little bit wary of doing something stoopid!

I was wondering if someone on the forum has experience with these and what sort of advice could be shared?

Maybe an SSC like routine for suspension?

Maybe there are reasonable progressions to follow?

Maybe I should avoid this altogether?

I was thinking that just hanging for some time would be a good place to start.

When comfortable in the position, use it for "reverse squats" and "torso raises".

Thanks for ideas, advice, shared experience?

hummmmmmm, really?

Nobody has an opinion or experience here?

Just go slow. I'm not prone to much of any kind of injury, so I don't know what to tell you in your situation... These never bothered me. Not my favorite tool of all time or anything, but they are neat... straight leg sit ups are very hard.

Thank you for chiming in Joshua, appreciated

I'll go slow, prudently and conservatively.

Joshua Naterman said:

(...) I'm not prone to much of any kind of injury (...)

ahhh.... bulletproof, I remember... :shock: 8)

Lol! I worked hard for years and years and years to build up the injuries I'm fixing now!

I've seen assistance work for muscle ups used with gravity boots.

Hanging upside down and I guess doing what amounts to reverse pull-downs with dumbells or kettlebells.

It's good for the spine to just hang and let it elongate, I guess.

They'd kill people in the old days hanging them upside down. Blood pools in the brain increases

inter-cranial pressure which can kill, eventually. So don't get stuck there

Guess handstands also have the problem, though harder to get stuck!

The deal with tendons I believe, is that they tend to be extremely strong and flexible when stressed continuously.

But, they are more susceptible to sudden impact injuries. Something with the make-up of the material.

It's less flexible and malleable when suddenly jarred. I believe.

FutureisNow said:

The deal with tendons I believe, is that they tend to be extremely strong and flexible when stressed continuously.

But, they are more susceptible to sudden impact injuries. Something with the make-up of the material.

It's less flexible and malleable when suddenly jarred. I believe.

I remember Kelly Starrett from MobilityWOD saying something to that effect.

Tendons are strong and flexible regardless of the mechanism of loading. They can handle much higher forces during short impulses (explosive events) than they can in a steady state of loading, just like every other material on earth, and are specifically designed to be springs. That is why they have elastin in the collagen matrix.

The reason you see injuries during explosive events is that the tendon and related structures are overloaded and not given time to fully regenerate. This means the tendon is getting intrinsically weaker with each bout of exercise, until a particular effort produces forces that are beyond the strain point of the tendon. That's when you hear a POP!

Because forces are so much higher with explosive work it is easy to enter to domain of forces causing micro-injuries AKA microtrauma. Since most people don't realize that it takes much longer for these injuries to heal than similar injuries in muscle tissue they do the same exercise with the same or greater force before the original injury is fully healed. So, not only is the tendon not allowed to get stronger, it also is being progressively weakened. This happens because people don't know how to program high intensity work correctly. It's the classic case of too much too soon.

With slower movements it is "harder" to damage these same structures because you don't have the large force spikes. In other words, you have more control over the force the tendon is exposed to. This tends to be either within the elastic strain limits of the tendon OR simply not crossing the line so far. However, when you DO cross this line the slow movements keep this stress on the tendon longer, causing a rapid unravelling. This is why you tend to see injuries in max attempts, particularly when people are pushing too hard or trying to use the stretch reflex to "cheat" on the rep.

Technically speaking, tendons rarely get injured. The musculotendinous junction is where nearly all tears occur, and the rest typically occur when the tendon rips off of the bone where it attaches. The achilles is somewhat different, typically breaking around 1cm above the posterior calcaneal tuberosity. Basically, 1 cm above where it attaches to the heel. The other common tear is when the tendon rips off of one of the gastroc heads where it joins the muscle (that's the junction mentioned above).

Your tendons respond extremely well to rapid loading and unloading, because this is part of what they are made for. They just don't respond well when this surpasses their current physiological limits. Over time with proper exercise they get stronger, and with consistent exposure to explosive work they become a bit more elastic as well. This elastic property helps protect the tendon from injury and is very important.

It is very important to have both explosive and more steady loading in your workouts, but only if you know what you're doing and have some self-control.

Great post Josh.

I was just reading with the level of difficulty in modern tumbling and vaulting increasing that achilles injuries are more common. There is some debate about further improvements in the landing surface. But interestingly another strategy to combat these injuries is a careful monitoring of the volume and athlete is putting in.

Cole Dano said:

Great post Josh.

I was just reading with the level of difficulty in modern tumbling and vaulting increasing that achilles injuries are more common. There is some debate about further improvements in the landing surface. But interestingly another strategy to combat these injuries is a careful monitoring of the volume and athlete is putting in.

Yes, and also avoiding landing backwards. MUCH higher risk there, especially with vaults because of the forward momentum.

Working very high reps with moderate tempos and very light loads on a nearly daily basis is also really important!

Joshua Naterman said:

Tendons are strong and flexible regardless of the mechanism of loading. They can handle much higher forces during short impulses (explosive events) than they can in a steady state of loading, just like every other material on earth, and are specifically designed to be springs. That is why they have elastin in the collagen matrix.

The reason you see injuries during explosive events is that the tendon and related structures are overloaded and not given time to fully regenerate. This means the tendon is getting intrinsically weaker with each bout of exercise, until a particular effort produces forces that are beyond the strain point of the tendon. That's when you hear a POP!

Because forces are so much higher with explosive work it is easy to enter to domain of forces causing micro-injuries AKA microtrauma. Since most people don't realize that it takes much longer for these injuries to heal than similar injuries in muscle tissue they do the same exercise with the same or greater force before the original injury is fully healed. So, not only is the tendon not allowed to get stronger, it also is being progressively weakened. This happens because people don't know how to program high intensity work correctly. It's the classic case of too much too soon.

With slower movements it is "harder" to damage these same structures because you don't have the large force spikes. In other words, you have more control over the force the tendon is exposed to. This tends to be either within the elastic strain limits of the tendon OR simply not crossing the line so far. However, when you DO cross this line the slow movements keep this stress on the tendon longer, causing a rapid unravelling. This is why you tend to see injuries in max attempts, particularly when people are pushing too hard or trying to use the stretch reflex to "cheat" on the rep.

Technically speaking, tendons rarely get injured. The musculotendinous junction is where nearly all tears occur, and the rest typically occur when the tendon rips off of the bone where it attaches. The achilles is somewhat different, typically breaking around 1cm above the posterior calcaneal tuberosity. Basically, 1 cm above where it attaches to the heel. The other common tear is when the tendon rips off of one of the gastroc heads where it joins the muscle (that's the junction mentioned above).

Your tendons respond extremely well to rapid loading and unloading, because this is part of what they are made for. They just don't respond well when this surpasses their current physiological limits. Over time with proper exercise they get stronger, and with consistent exposure to explosive work they become a bit more elastic as well. This elastic property helps protect the tendon from injury and is very important.

It is very important to have both explosive and more steady loading in your workouts, but only if you know what you're doing and have some self-control.

I agree with you in a practical sense Josh. Though tendons aren't wholly elastic springs. The collagen fibers exhibit viscous properties also - so the response to force varies with time (viscoelastic). I've seen an example where a similar material can be poked and resists deformation - you can't break the surface - but you can work your way slowly into it. Likewise, tendons will stretch more when tensed slowly, and will be stiffer during an explosive movement. So while I agree with you that

the injury will tend to be at the MT junction or attachment to the bone, this may also be partly due to the degree

of stiffness imparted by the type of movement itself. As the elasticity of the tendon but not its tensile strength is reduced during an explosive movement, something else will give instead...

In other words, the failure point varies with the movement type, it seems to me.

There is some truth to the viscoelastic properties of the collagen, but that is largely due to the natural weave pattern that makes it a lot like the "dynamic" ropes in climbing (though significantly less elastic) and these same viscoelastic properties are part of why it is easy to build up tendinopathies with excessive passive tension. Collagen isn't made to be elastic and has a very small elastic deformation zone before plastic deformation (damage) starts to happen. Constant tension is where this tends to happen.

The failure point isn't related to the type of movement so much as the direction of force. Most tendons don't have the ability to have force angles as varied as the gastroc part of the achilles tendon, but the tear at the gastroc head tends to happen with high force eccentric contraction (often in tennis with older players) when stopping to change direction. You get more loading on one side with the same force, the musculotendinous junction is overloaded, and off part of the tendon goes!

For the most part though, you'll see true tears with stretch reflex movements. Whether the tendon tears off of the muscle or the bone is fully dependent on which attachment is stronger. As we get stronger through training, the tears tend to happen at the bone regardless of mechanism of injury.

That's good thinking though, and there is certainly some truth to that. Nothing is ever 100%.

Tendons are definitely not super flexible, most fail with less than 6-7% stretch. A healthy Achilles tendon can handle up to 16-20% stretch for VERY brief moments, as is often seen in single leg jumping/bounding. Yet another reason for people to slowly build up to high intensity plyometrics... it takes a long time to build tendons that can handle that kind of thing on a regular basis with any real volume.

Wonderful posts Joshua, thanks.

Joshua Naterman said:

(...) Working very high reps with moderate tempos and very light loads on a nearly daily basis is also really important!

For the sake of calibration, have you got a couple of examples that you could share that illustrate what you mean by "very high reps", "moderate tempo" and "light load"?

Thank you.

FredInChina said:

Wonderful posts Joshua, thanks.

Joshua Naterman said:

(...) Working very high reps with moderate tempos and very light loads on a nearly daily basis is also really important!

For the sake of calibration, have you got a couple of examples that you could share that illustrate what you mean by "very high reps", "moderate tempo" and "light load"?

Thank you.

Well, let's say you are working on inner elbow recovery. We're talking about doing 2-3 seconds concentric, 2-3 seconds hold at the top, and 2-3 seconds down to straight arm as one rep. You want to shoot for, quite honestly, as many reps as you can. The weight needs to be light enough to allow for at least 50 reps. If you go on the short side, that's about 5 minutes of non-stop work. For me, that's about 5-8 lbs. It will be a while before you can do a full 50-100 reps, but it's worth doing. This is a little time consuming, but you will notice that you don't get any DOMS. This is an excellent way to spend rests between strength sets. Obviously (I hope) this would be best done on a lower body intensive day in the case of the biceps, or at least after all exercises that depend on the part you're about to work have been completed.

The ballistic approach, which is also important, is to do progressively faster movements with just your bodyweight until it's full speed. Empty arm curls. No load. You start at the top, lower down to varying lengths and then pull up. Just by starting with shorter movements you are lowering the forces required to produce the given speed of movement and thus tendon loading, but you are still keeping things explosive and very short duration. You might want to do this once a day during recovery.

Very interesting Joshua, thank you.

How would that translate for an Achilles rehab/prehab?

Protocol 1:

3,3,3,0 tempo calf raises for 50-100 reps with full ROM (on a stair)

Protocol 2:

pushing on the wall alternatively with each calf in full rom, bending the knee of the opposite leg (a little like running in place while pushing on a wall?)

Would that be appropriate?

Would you do both protocols every day?

Flat ground. Not stairs. While you want to stretch full rom, you only want to work the calves in the range of motion they are meant to work in. You will reduce force output if you work the calves with resistance training full ROM and you will also increase your risk of injury due to extremely high forces on the tendon.

Protocol 1 can be done every day if you want. I will not advise on the second as A) that's not how I would do it and b) there is too much potential for people to misinterpret the information and get hurt.

Noted, thank you Joshua, I appreciate your advice