How to train your tendons, ligaments and joints

When it comes to exercise, muscles and bones are clearly the stars of the show. But to feel your best, you also need to take a little time to exercise the body’s supporting cast: connective tissues like ligaments and tendons.

However, what works for ligaments doesn’t work for tendons, and vice versa.

“Each part responds to different stimulus,” said Jay Dicharry, a professor of physical therapy at Oregon State University and the author of “Running Rewired.”

Here’s how to keep your tendons, ligaments and joints healthy.

Tendons connect muscles to bones.

“Think of tendons as springs,” said Joel Sattgast, an assistant professor at Eastern Washington University. “As with any spring, over time they stretch out and lose some of that springiness.”

To prevent injuries or keep them from returning, you need to train the tendons, and the muscle they connect to, slowly and with weights.

To help prevent damage to the Achilles tendon, do slow calf raises (three seconds up, three seconds down) for 25 repetitions twice a week. As this becomes easy, progress to raising one leg at a time and eventually hold a medium-weight dumbbell on the side you’re working.

Similarly, if you are worried about your biceps tendon (on the inside of your elbow), do slow biceps curls, eventually increasing the weight.

Ligaments connect bones and provide stability. Unlike tendons, ligaments don’t degrade from chronic overuse; rather, they usually strain or tear suddenly.

So you need to retrain the ligaments and surrounding muscles with repeating movement patterns to help them “make smarter decisions” as they move, Dicharry said.

If you’ve suffered a ligament injury in the past, you should restore its stability with exercises targeting the surrounding muscles.

Where tendons love high loads and lower repetitions, ligaments respond better to low loads and high repetitions. For example, if you’ve sprained your wrist, use a tennis racquet and ball. With the racquet in your hand and the inside of your wrist pointing up, gently bounce the ball on the racquet.

To retrain the tissues surrounding an ankle sprain, try a single-leg balance. With bare feet, lift one leg in the air for 30 seconds without wobbling. Keep your foot flat. For an added challenge, stretch an exercise band around a table leg and hold down the other end with your toe as you balance. As you get better, try it with your eyes closed.

As you age, the fluid in joints decreases, protective cartilage thins out and you might feel stiff and “creaky” or even suffer from osteoarthritis.

The key to healthy joints is giving them a variety of motions across multiple planes, Dicharry said.

For example, if your hand and wrist joints are sore, take a wad of Silly Putty in one hand and roll it into a ball, and then a hot dog shape, and then make a loop. Put your fingers inside the loop, open them up and stretch out the loop.

This same multiplanar, multidirectional strategy can be applied to other joints. Movements like standing rotations can be good for your hips.

Like ligaments, joints strengthen with high repetitions and low loads. When targeting your joints, try 40 repetitions of the movement before switching sides, aiming for two sessions each week.