- Aug 15, 2018
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Muscles adapt in weeks. Tendons adapt in months, and mostly on their own schedule. That mismatch is behind a lot of the elbow, knee, and shoulder grief lifters collect over a career, so the research on what actually helps tendons — training-wise and nutrition-wise — is worth a close look.
The nutrition angle got famous through Keith Baar's work. In a 2017 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Baar and colleagues had subjects take 15 g of gelatin with vitamin C about an hour before a short (6-minute) session of intermittent loading, twice a day separated by at least six hours. The gelatin-plus-vitamin-C group showed roughly doubled collagen synthesis in engineered ligament tissue compared with lower doses or placebo. The reasoning is that tendons get poor blood flow during continuous exercise, so nutrients need to be on board before a brief loading bout "pumps" them in — and tendon cells then go quiet for several hours, hence the spacing. It's an elegant model, but the in-human performance and injury outcomes are still thin: most follow-up evidence is on collagen synthesis markers and symptom scores in people with existing tendinopathy, not on tendon strength in healthy lifters.
The training evidence is sturdier. Systematic reviews of tendinopathy rehab (for example, the work building on Alfredson and Silbernagel's protocols for Achilles and patellar tendons) consistently support progressive heavy loading — including slow eccentrics and heavy slow resistance — for reducing tendon pain over 12+ weeks. A key nuance from Jill Cook's tendon continuum model: tendons respond to load, and complete rest generally makes them worse, not better; the goal is dosed, tolerable loading that gradually increases, with pain monitored on a 24-hour response basis.
Put together: if your tendons are a weak point, the boring answer — progressive loading, patience measured in months, and managing sudden spikes in volume or intensity — has the strongest support. Gelatin or collagen peptides with vitamin C before loading sessions is a reasonable, low-cost bet on decent mechanistic evidence, not a proven fix.
Whose tendons are the limiting factor in their training right now, and what's worked for you — load management, eccentrics, isometrics, nutrition, or just time?
The nutrition angle got famous through Keith Baar's work. In a 2017 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Baar and colleagues had subjects take 15 g of gelatin with vitamin C about an hour before a short (6-minute) session of intermittent loading, twice a day separated by at least six hours. The gelatin-plus-vitamin-C group showed roughly doubled collagen synthesis in engineered ligament tissue compared with lower doses or placebo. The reasoning is that tendons get poor blood flow during continuous exercise, so nutrients need to be on board before a brief loading bout "pumps" them in — and tendon cells then go quiet for several hours, hence the spacing. It's an elegant model, but the in-human performance and injury outcomes are still thin: most follow-up evidence is on collagen synthesis markers and symptom scores in people with existing tendinopathy, not on tendon strength in healthy lifters.
The training evidence is sturdier. Systematic reviews of tendinopathy rehab (for example, the work building on Alfredson and Silbernagel's protocols for Achilles and patellar tendons) consistently support progressive heavy loading — including slow eccentrics and heavy slow resistance — for reducing tendon pain over 12+ weeks. A key nuance from Jill Cook's tendon continuum model: tendons respond to load, and complete rest generally makes them worse, not better; the goal is dosed, tolerable loading that gradually increases, with pain monitored on a 24-hour response basis.
Put together: if your tendons are a weak point, the boring answer — progressive loading, patience measured in months, and managing sudden spikes in volume or intensity — has the strongest support. Gelatin or collagen peptides with vitamin C before loading sessions is a reasonable, low-cost bet on decent mechanistic evidence, not a proven fix.
Whose tendons are the limiting factor in their training right now, and what's worked for you — load management, eccentrics, isometrics, nutrition, or just time?