What's the fastest way to get rid of tendonitis?

Correct the verb: tendonitis is a gap between load and capacity, and a gap is closed, not got rid of

What's the fastest way to get rid of tendonitis is a question whose verb is where it goes wrong, and the honest page corrects the verb before answering, because a reader who is trying to get rid of tendonitis is trying to do something to it that cannot be done, and will keep trying until the verb changes. Get rid of is the verb for a thing that is in the body and should not be, an infection, a splinter, a stone, and that treatment removes, after which it is gone; it is the verb that the name tendonitis invites, since the -itis suffix says inflammation and inflammation is a thing that comes and goes. But in nearly every chronic case what is called tendonitis is tendinopathy, and tendinopathy is not a thing in the tendon; it is a relationship between two quantities, the load that the tendon is asked to carry and the capacity that it has to carry it, and specifically it is the state in which the first exceeds the second for long enough that the tendon's matrix disorganises, its cells multiply and change, and it thickens, loses structure and hurts under load. The one cause and its accelerators are on the causes of tendonitis page, and the five whys that run beneath them on the root cause page, and both arrive at the same place: the gap opened because load rose faster than the tendon could adapt, tendon adapting to load over months while the muscle that pulls on it adapts in weeks, so that the muscle was ready for the new programme, the new sport, the return from the lay-off or the extra sessions long before the tendon was, and the gap between a muscle that could and a tendon that could not yet is the condition. A gap is not got rid of. A gap is closed, and it is closed by moving one of its two edges toward the other, which gives exactly two ways of treating tendinopathy and explains why every treatment that has ever worked or seemed to work belongs to one of them. The load edge can be brought down until it sits under the capacity edge. The capacity edge can be raised until it sits above the load edge. Everything on the shelf and in the clinic is one or the other or neither, and the things that are neither, the tablets, the injections that change pain without changing load or capacity, are the things that work for four weeks and then do not, because a gap with the pain taken out of it is still a gap, and the twelve-month column that shows this is on the what really works page. Once the verb is corrected, the question of the fastest way has a precise answer, which is the fastest way to close a gap from both sides at once and keep it closed.

Closing from the load side is fast and temporary, from the capacity side slow and permanent, the fastest honest route uses both, and the adjunct sits on the capacity side

Closing the gap from the load side is fast and temporary, and the honest page gives it its due before explaining why it is not enough. Dropping the load, fewer sessions, lighter weights, a shorter run, a heel raise in the shoe for the Achilles, a strap below the kneecap, a thicker bar or a different grip for the elbow, a lower cadence or a flatter route, brings the load edge down until it sits under the capacity edge, and a tendon that sits under its capacity stops being reactive within a couple of weeks: the swelling settles, the morning stiffness eases, the pain under load fades, and the reader feels that the tendonitis is going. It is fast because a reactive tendon calms quickly once it is no longer being overloaded, and it is temporary because nothing has happened to the capacity edge, which is exactly where it was, so the gap reopens on the day the old load returns, which is the reason rest feels like a cure and behaves like a pause, and the reason a reader who rests and returns has tendonitis again at the same load within weeks. Dropping the load to zero is the worst version of the load-side move, because a tendon that is completely unloaded lowers its collagen synthesis below baseline and loses matrix quality within weeks, so the capacity edge actually falls while the reader rests, and the gap on return is wider than before. Closing the gap from the capacity side is slow and permanent. Raising the capacity edge means remodelling the tendon's matrix under load until it tolerates more than it did, and the method is heavy slow resistance, three slow repetitions at loads near the heaviest manageable in the movement that loads the tendon, every second or third day to match the seventy-two hour synthesis curve, through the months that remodelling takes, followed by energy storage loading when the heavy work is tolerated; the capacity edge rises slowly because collagen turns over slowly, and it stays risen for as long as the loading that raised it is kept, which makes it the only permanent move on the page. The fastest honest route to a closed gap uses both sides in order. Today, bring the load edge down to just under the capacity edge, not to zero: keep training the tendon at loads it tolerates with pain that settles by the next morning, wear the heel raise, change the grip, cut the sessions, so that the tendon stops being reactive while still being loaded enough to keep its synthesis up. Then raise the capacity edge over the following months with the heavy slow work, raising the load edge back toward the old level as the next-morning pain rule allows, with isometric holds for the reactive days, until the capacity sits above the load the reader actually wants to carry and the gap is closed from both sides. And keep it closed afterwards with a maintenance dose of heavy loading, one or two sessions a week for that tendon, because the tendon that failed once has shown exactly where the reader's gap opens, and a capacity edge that is not maintained drifts back down toward the load edge until the two meet again. Collagen's protocol sits on the capacity side, beside the heavy session: 15g gelatin with vitamin C about an hour before loading raised a synthesis marker in healthy men, and 2.5g beside six months of calf strengthening improved Achilles tendinopathy more than placebo beside the same exercise, which is capacity-side evidence inside a capacity-side programme, and it does nothing on the load side because nothing eaten changes what a tendon is asked to carry. The worked example is that adjunct at habit scale, stated on its true terms: two capsules, 1200mg hydrolysed type 1 marine collagen with 12mg vitamin C at 15% of its reference value plus zinc, 120 for £16.99 at 28p a day, lab tested and UK made, below the 15g protocol dose, carrying vitamin C's collagen formation sentence for cartilage and bones and no tendon claim. What's the fastest way to get rid of tendonitis: stop trying to get rid of it and close the gap, from the load side today and the capacity side over months, then keep it closed.

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