Moreover, our results suggest that chronic increases in tendon loading during childhood result in microstructural changes which increase the tendon's YM.

From this study : https://lnkd.in/g8RFw5nh

Muscles don’t directly connect to joints that they move. Think of it this way engines produce force. Wheels translate that force by spinning to propel us forward. What connects the engine to the wheel. There’s the gears, shafts and differentials that need to take the force the engine produces and apply it to the wheel to actually produce movement.

The tendon are those gears, shafts and differentials for the human body. The muscle being the engine. And your joints and bones being the wheels.

The slightly old but elegant paper above is instructive. Kids who are trained to generate force and transmit it to joints earlier in life are likelier to have tendons with a higher Young’s Modulus. That basically means a tendon that is more efficient at sending force to the muscle. A more robust shaft, gear and differential if you will.

Why it matters

The current epidemic of joint aches, pains and simplistic prescriptions to walk miss out on why muscles exist. They exist to produce force and move joints. When we ignore this function, muscles wither away and tendons lose their capacity to pass on force efficiently. And when you do suddenly place this demand on the muscles or tendons, they are susceptible to getting overworked, achy, hurt or inflamed. Basically you have very poor tolerance for movement and positions. The threshold of activity it takes to make you tired or vulnerable to injury is not very high.

A proper activity diet ensures every joint group and its surrounding muscles gets a good dose of movement to engage different muscles and tendons.

But the real magic can happen when children are given this diet of movement. Their growing bodies are capable of building stronger and more responsive tendons when given the right dose of activity.

And that’s what responsible parents should be doing. Or even good doctors should be recommending. Things children can do to become more robust adults.

And strength training is one of those things. And the science backing this assertion has been around a while.

Now watch in the video to see how tendons are stiffened and strengthened in real time :)