Why can’t you strengthen a tendon
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You can, it is called resistance training.
Here’s a research article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/173970/
Or you could just Google it.
Either way, tendons can get “stronger”.
Can you not? That’s news to me.
Tendons are like strong but less flexible cords that connect muscles to bones. You can strengthen tendons indirectly by exercising and building up muscle strength, but it takes time and care to avoid injuring them because they respond more slowly than muscles.
I saw some decent information in other responses, but the whole picture wasn’t quite clear yet.
First, tendons are made of fibrous tissue and they connect muscles to bone. They function like the cables on a crane – they can stretch slightly, but all the movement in your body starts from the motor on the crane, which is your muscles contracting in this analogy.
While you can’t “strengthen them” in a way analogous to weightlifting, you can increase their cross-sectional area, which will allow them to hold a heavier load. You can also strengthen the muscles that use said tendons, but if you do do without considering the relative strength of the connective tissue you run the risk of developing injuries such as golfer’s/tennis elbow (i.e. the motor’s too strong, the load’s too heavy, and the cable’s too thin). Those injuries are frequently caused by shock-loading of the connective tissue in the sports each one is named for, but they can also arise when someone’s developed strength relatively quickly without letting their tendons catch up.
As mentioned in other comments, this is because all connective tissue (tendons & ligaments) don’t have nearly as much blood flow as muscles or bones. Resistance training is still important for connective tissues, but they won’t adapt nearly as quickly as muscles will under the same loads. Unfortunately, this also means that any injuries sustained to a tendon will take much longer to heal than a pulled muscle.
You absolutely can strengthen tendons (which connect muscle to bone)–through resistance training–just like muscle. You may be thinking of ligaments (which hold bones together), which are notoriously hard to heal. Or at least the fact that ligaments can be over-stretched and damaged, whereas muscle and tendon can elongate and return to their original lengths, even after injury.
We’re finding out that tendons may even have contractile properties and may be strengthened in their ability to return force too through the stretch-shortening cycle.
As someone who damaged his Achilles tendon a little while ago – you certainly can increase their strength, but it does take time. It took about 6 weeks before I could walk any distance, but 6 months before I didn’t feel any discomfort.
The physio gave me a series of exercises to rebuild the strength of the tendon after it had healed – mostly resistance training, as stated elsewhere. The tendon on the damaged side is now noticeably thicker than on the other.
They can, it takes longer than muscles like 2-3 months.
Very common for juiced bodybuilders to i.e. bust their biceps tendon doing curls because they increased weight too quickly before the tendon could properly grow
On a similar note, also bones constantly reinforce/restructure. It takes time!
You absolutely can strengthen tendons.
One of the reasons people who do steroids are very likely to tear tendons is because muscles and connective tissue really needs to strengthen in conjunction. As you stress a muscle to make your body make it stronger, you also stress the tendons and ligaments and bones, and you body will reinforce them all too. After all, you are only as strong as the weakest part.
However, these parts don’t all develop at the same speed. Muscles tend to atrophy faster from lack of use and grow faster from use. Tendons have very little blood flow so repairs and reinforcements are slow. They also have very little warning before they fail. You might feel fine during a workout only to feel a pop. When people do steroids, their muscles grow much, much faster, but their connective tissue does not. It’s common for people to develop long term debilitating problems as a result of the damage they do to their own body just from simply being too strong. A lot of the mr Olympia competitors are basically cripples after they retire.
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