Why can’t you strengthen a tendon
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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.
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