If it feels like Achilles tendon ruptures are happening more often in the NBA lately, you’re not imagining it. Some of the league’s biggest stars have suffered season-ending Achilles injuries in the past few years—often during high-stakes moments after long seasons or intense stretches of play.
The natural reaction is to ask, why?
We’ve heard all kinds of theories from experts and non-experts alike—blaming everything from too many games and poor load management to ineffective training and therapy protocols. But the truth is, it’s way more complicated than that. Each of these cases comes with its own unique set of contributing factors.
These injuries are still rare—even in the NBA, and certainly in the general population. And while it’s not possible to “bulletproof” your tendons, there may be some things you can do to stack the odds a little more in your favor—whether you’re on the field, on the court, or just staying active.
While we can’t eliminate all risk, we can train in a way that makes our bodies more resilient. Here are some key ways to prepare your tissues and reduce the chance of everything going sideways in an instant.
Most people don’t tear their Achilles because they start running or lift weights for the first time. It usually happens when they jump back into something they used to do—pickup basketball, tennis, weekend flag football—thinking they can perform at the same level they did years (or even months) ago.
The problem? Your body adapts to whatever you’re currently doing. If your weekly routine involves sitting at a desk, maybe a spin class or two, and not much else, then suddenly launching into a high-intensity, reactive sport is a big mismatch between readiness and demand.
The forces involved in cutting, jumping, and sprinting are high. If you haven’t been exposing your tissues to those loads regularly, they’re likely not prepared for them. You might feel good—until you don’t.
Start slower than you think you need to. Give your body time to prepare for the demands of the activity before you try to relive your glory days.
Tendons don’t respond the same way muscles do. They like slow, controlled, progressive loading—especially during the lowering (eccentric) phase of a movement. Calf raises with a slow lower, heel drops, split squats, and sled pushes are all great ways to build tendon capacity and stiffness.
Think of this as building your structural foundation. If you’ve been skipping heavy or slow work, your tendons might not be ready for harder demands—even if your muscles feel fine.
If you’re not including this type of loading in your training, you’re leaving one of your most powerful injury-prevention tools on the sideline.
If you want to be able to move explosively, you need to train explosively. Slow eccentrics build strength, but explosive and reactive movements like hops, skips, bounds, and landings teach your tendons how to store and release energy quickly under load while the muscle stays relatively isometric.
That’s how you build elasticity in the system—stiffness where you need it, spring where you want it.
A common example: the agility ladder. If you’re moving through it slowly and deliberately, you’re not really training reactivity—you’re training coordination. To get a tendon benefit, you have to move fast and focus on how quickly you come off the ground.
Progress these movements gradually—start with control and consistency, then increase the speed, complexity, and impact over time. Just like with strength training, the goal is to build capacity gradually, increasing the challenge as your tissues adapt.
You don’t need to spend 20 minutes doing isolated foot drills to improve foot and ankle function (but if you have time – do it!). Simply doing part of your training without shoes can go a long way.
When you train barefoot—or in minimalist shoes—you get more sensory feedback, more natural motion, and better recruitment of the small stabilizing muscles in your feet and ankles. This helps improve balance, control, and load distribution—all of which matter when you’re asking your body to absorb force and change direction.
If your feet have gotten lazy from modern footwear (and most have), barefoot training helps bring some of that awareness and strength back online. It won’t rebuild a collapsed arch on its own, but it’s an easy way to reinforce better mechanics without carving time out for extra exercises.
Try going barefoot for part of your warm-up, single-leg balance work, or strength movements like deadlifts or kettlebell carries.
Doing the right things to strengthen your tendons—slow eccentrics, progressive loading, reactive movement—is a great start. Tendons respond well to that kind of work. But they also remodel slowly, and it’s easy to get impatient and try to fast-track the process.
That’s when problems tend to show up.
If you’re ramping up your training or playing more than usual, keep tabs on how your tendons feel:
These are signs your tendon might be struggling to keep up with the load. Sometimes that happens when people try to train their way to healthier tendons. Other times it happens when they’re simply playing more—more matches, more pickup games, more summer league.
Either way, it’s the same issue: capacity vs. demand.
If you catch the warning signs early, you can make small adjustments and stay on track and avoid developing tendinopathy.
And here’s one more important point: the people who do best long-term? They never stop playing in the first place.
Even if they’re not training hard year-round, they keep exposing their tissues to the kinds of loads they want to be able to handle. That ongoing exposure is a powerful form of maintenance.
So yes—train smart, load progressively, and keep playing. Just stay tuned in along the way.
What’s happening in the NBA is a high-profile reminder of how demand and preparedness must stay in sync. While we may not be playing on national television, the principle is the same: catastrophic injuries tend to happen when demands are high and capacity isn’t there.
So whether you’re chasing a PR, training for your next race, or just trying to stay active, the key is simple: prepare your tissues for the work you’re asking them to do.
Not sure where to start? That’s what we’re here for!
Customized nutrition and wellness coaching tailored to you, empowering sustainable ways of approaching food, exercise, sleep, and stress management. Whether you need some knowledge-based guidance on your journey to finding nutritional balance, some supportive structure to meet specific goals, or incorporate a body positive approach with food that lifts you up rather than tears you down, our nutrition and wellness coaching provides you with tools and ongoing support to develop your own unique healthy balance. Learn More