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They say if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

That’s what it felt like during my darkest days with tendonitis and maybe you’re going through something similar right now.

Each morning, the very first thought on my mind was “Will it hurt when I get up?” and that same fear haunted me all throughout the day.

I had to lean on the rails when taking stairs and driving to work was a nightmare.

I couldn’t run, let alone jump without regretting it the days after and on some days even sitting would hurt.

With each passing week I was getting more out of shape. I was slowly losing everything I had worked so hard for in the gym. I felt sluggish and awful.

The frustrating part was that I was already doing what I thought were all the right things:

Stretching, massage, warming-up for 30+ minutes, getting treatments, and resting for weeks at a time, but the pain always came back.

What else could I try?

In my mind, I had already tried everything and my biggest fear was that I would have this pain for the rest of my life and would have to give up all the things I enjoy.

All that time and effort I spent going in circles made me wonder:

If my knees are this bad at 25 years old, what will they be like when I’m 50?

Will the pain ever go away?

What was I doing wrong?

Just as I was about to give up, a glimmer of hope appeared…

A Glimmer of Hope

One of the first things I did for my knee pain was buy all the books I could get my hands on, but regardless of whether the author was a physical therapist, orthopedist, or another kind of medical professional, the chapters on patellar tendonitis were always very short and of no use to me.

I didn’t want surgery, injections, or anti-inflammatories. There had to be another way. And there was...

In 2010, I discovered a little-known educational manual for athletic coaches to help them get results for athletes with knee pain. This book introduced me to a whole new world: I learned how to strengthen the knee by improving leg biomechanics with specific exercises.

Then I quickly applied everything I had learned and for the first time my tendonitis did get better, but as much as I hated to admit it to myself, I was still a long way from being back to 100%. Something important was still missing, but at least now I had an idea where I could find it.

The great part about being a university student in Dresden was that we had one of Germany’s biggest libraries right around the corner and its computers gave us direct access to hundreds of research journals worth thousands of Dollars.

That’s where I spent a lot of time in the months that followed and during that research I eventually found the exact type of exercises that were scientifically proven to help you recover from any level of tendon damage. Now I just had to do one more thing.

After a few months of self-experimentation on how to best use what I had learned about biomechanics and strengthening tendons I was finally able to live a normal life again. I could run, jump, and play basketball to my heart’s content.

What about you? I’m sure you’ve thought about it:

If your knees were 100% again, what would your perfect day look like?

Is This Your Perfect Day?

Imagine a Saturday morning in the summer. You wake up feeling relaxed and confident.

The weather is perfect, so you quickly climb out of bed and jump down the stairs, because you want to go for a quick run to enjoy the beautiful morning light.

You put on your favorite workout clothes, drink a glass of water, and then you can’t help but smile as you look at yourself in the mirror.

After a short warm-up in the crisp morning air you decide to run your favorite route.

As you glide through nature you can feel your stress melt away and before you know it an hour has gone by. It’s always amazing how much running helps you clear your head.

Your legs insist that you could easily keep going, but you feel more like having a lavish breakfast with your friends at that breakfast place you love. Maybe you’ll drop by the gym later as well.

It’s going to be a great day.

How would your perfect day be different?

Do you play basketball, football, volleyball, or soccer?

If you love team sports, imagine the following.

It's three months from now. You're in the locker room, getting changed for the game. You feel confident and in great shape, because your training went very well in the previous weeks.

The game begins. You move effortlessly and you make great plays. You're having a blast.

Years go by and you get better and better. You know that your body will fully support your style of play. Progress comes like clockwork.

Maybe this all sounds impossible to you now, I know it would have to me, but let me tell you:

After everything I’ve learned in the last 9 years, all the seminars I went to, and all the people I’ve helped, I know that anything is possible, as long as you don’t have one the following problems holding you back…

Why Some People Waste Years

Research has shown that tendonitis rehab can take anywhere between a dozen weeks right up to ten years or more and everything in between. I wondered:

Why the huge difference?

Sure, maybe certain cases are worse, but that still doesn’t explain why some people have tendonitis for years and then suddenly get better in just a few months.

But what if I could tell you right now how long your rehab would take? Because as it turns out, it will take longer depending on how many of the following problems you’re struggling with.

Problem 1: Lack of Deep Knowledge

Tell me if any of this sounds familiar to you:

• Are you unsure how much you should train during rehab?
• Are you frustrated with vague and conflicting advice?
• Do you worry about causing a setback or further damage?
• Are you unsure what your next steps should be?
• Do you feel like something is missing from your rehab program?
• Are you worried about permanent damage?

In early 2010, I would have checked all of these boxes and it took me a while to figure out why.

I found that in my own rehab, whenever I wasn’t sure what to do next, which exercises to do, how hard to train, how often I should train, or any anything else really, it was because I still had a too limited understanding of what was going on inside my knee. It’s like this for example:

If you don’t know how a computer works, you’ll have a really hard and frustrating time trying to repair one. Maybe you would even give up completely. But the truth is that it’s something you can learn, it’s a skill, and as the family go-to-guy for computer issues I can tell you that it’s much easier than most people think.

It’s not magic, but more like fixing a car, only with smaller parts, dust instead of grease, and hitting your head against the table and not a car chassis. Joking aside, my point is this:

The deeper your knowledge about a problem is, the easier it will be for you to solve it, but if your knowledge is only superficial, you’ll instead feel like you’ve “already tried everything” while you’re going in circles and getting nowhere.

Deep knowledge also means that where others give up, saying they’ll just have to “live with it”, your mind will immediately hand you a dozen other solutions you could try.

Hindsight is always 20/20, so looking back, it’s clear how huge of an issue not knowing enough can be, but there’s more. Here’s problem #2.

Lack of time

Is time a serious issue for you?

If your time to exercise is extremely limited you will find it impossible to do an hour or more of training each day. I have two toddlers and am self-employed, so I know first-hand how family and work commitments can make it challenging to do even 30 minutes of training each day, let alone an hour.

Lack of time can make progress near impossible, just like…

Getting distracted

Are you not as disciplined as you think you should be?

It’s easy to get distracted with life. Maybe your family life is busy and demanding, maybe you have a tough job, or maybe you just want to have some fun and find doing rehab boring, but here’s the thing:

Getting distracted and doing the rehab exercises half-heartedly or without consistency is a huge problem if you want lasting results, or any results, really. The sad part is that what most people do next makes it even worse.

Betting on the wrong team

If you’ve had tendonitis for a while, you’ve probably come across dozens of different treatment recommendations like PRP injections, cold laser therapy, resting, ultrasound therapy, stem cell injections, cross-friction massage, iontophoresis, ultrasound therapy, etc…

The big problem isn’t that some of those treatments will cost $1,000 or more, no. The problem is:

According to several dozen double-blind studies, numerous systematic reviews, and countless other research papers, the overwhelming majority of these treatments do not work at all for patellar tendonitis.

And it gets worse:

Some of the offered treatment approaches will first make you feel better for a few weeks, but in the long run you’ll suffer setbacks and your tendons would have been much stronger without the treatment.

These are facts hundreds of scientists have confirmed through thousands of hours of work and now we can look all of it up in peer-reviewed research articles. But what happens to those that don’t know about this research?

If you don’t know which treatments work, you may spend months, maybe years, trying make your knees stronger with methods that cannot possibly do it.

The more of these “treatments” you try, the more convinced you may become that you’ve already tried everything, when in fact, you’ve only been betting on the wrong team.

Scientists call this “over-reliance on passive treatments” and you’ll actually find it in published research papers as one of the reasons why people fail tendonitis rehab.

I call it “hoping someone else will fix it for you” and this brings us to the last problem you may be struggling with:

Not believing in yourself

Years ago I was afraid my knees would never get better and that I’d never be able to the things I love again, but the rebellious part of me didn’t want to accept it. This small bit of doubt fundamentally changed the path of my life and it led right here, to you and me connecting through this page.

If I had given up back then, I wouldn’t be here.

If you had given up already, you wouldn’t be here either.

But the longer it takes you to get better, the more hopeless you can become. So if you only take one piece of advice from me today, let it be this:

Believe in yourself.

The science is clear: once you find the right exercise approach and the right knowledge for your situation, your tendons can get stronger.

Yes, the more mistakes you make the longer and more frustrating this process will become, but if you want to get better, there is no other way.

But there is one giant shortcut...

What if instead of wasting some of your best years on trial and error, you would already know what works and what doesn’t, which exercises to do, when to do them, how hard to train, what to do when you’re stuck, and how to overcome lack of time or discipline?

What if instead of relying on guess work to get better you could base your decisions on facts gathered from hundreds of scientific studies and the experience of renowned patellar tendonitis clinicians?

What if you could finally go back to living your life how you want?

Here’s how.

Tough Tendons is the perfect program for everyone with patellar tendonitis who wants to go back to living a normal life with strong legs and healthy knees.

Regardless of whether you are an athlete or just want to enjoy a free life, this program will show the exact steps you can take to recover from any level of tendon damage even if your time to train is extremely limited and even if you’ve already tried everything.

How Tough Tendons works

Tough Tendons is an online course you can take from the comforts of your home, anywhere in the world.

My goal with this program is to give you access to the same expert knowledge world-class athletes can tap into when recovering from patellar tendonitis. To make that as easy as possible, I’ve split the course into three parts.

The first part is the Tough Tendons training, a comprehensive 3-phase training program I designed to help you recover from any level of tendon damage and to eliminate biomechanical causes of patellar tendon overload. You can do this training anywhere and you don’t need to be an athlete to get started.

The second part is the Deep Knowledge Modules, an in-depth video series on everything you need to know to get back to 100% like what you can do to avoid setbacks, how to speed up recovery with rehab shortcuts, the rehab mistakes that can make tendonitis last years, and much, much more.

And finally, I will always be there to answer every question you have about the material in the course.

Once you’re enrolled you will be immediately be able to access the course materials with your smartphone, tablet, Smart-TV, or laptop. Here is a selection of the individual topics we will cover.

The Course Schedule

 

You can go through the course at your own pace because you will have lifetime access to all of it and to help you make the most of the course I will always be there to answer your questions about the material we cover.

Now let’s see if Tough Tendons is right for you.

Is Tough Tendons right for you?

The idea behind this program is unusual and it may even be the first time in your life that you’re hearing about online courses, so let me be direct about how you can tell whether this course is right for you.

Tough Tendons is not for you if…

• You haven’t been cleared for exercise by your doctor.
• You’re expecting a magic bullet that will make your pain go away in just a few weeks.
• You need someone else to do all the work for you.
• You’re not willing to put your sport on hold for 8 weeks.
• You want me to diagnose your pain or provide medical advice. I’m not a doctor.

Tough Tendon IS for you if…

• You’re willing to invest a few months of your life into this program so that you can live the remaining decades without pain, free to do what you want.
• You’re open to trying unusual solutions as long as they’re backed up by scientific facts and logic.
• You love being active and want to go back to enjoying a normal life.
• You’re tired of useless advice like “just rest it”.
• You’re committed to doing whatever it takes.

If you still have questions, you find asnwers in the FAQ below.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are answers to common questions about Tough Tendons:

Is your question missing? Just send me an email and I will try to get back to you before enrollment closes.

“Will this work for me?”

You’re probably wondering whether this program will work for you. I can understand your doubts, because I’m a skeptic as well. That’s why I took the following seven precautions when I designed this course.

Everything Is 100% Evidence-Based

I’m skeptical of advice that is solely rooted in personal opinion and anecdotal evidence. So I made sure that every single piece of this program is supported by academic research. I ended up with close to 800 scientific references before this course was finished and this science applies to all humans.

Regardless of whether you’re male or female, tall or short, strong or weak, young or old, the biomechanical principles and tendon strengthening exercises this course uses work for every human, no matter whether you want to run a 10K, play pick-up basketball, or just want to walk your dog.

Based on Decades of Expert Experience

Aside from the scientific references this course also uses the advice of renowned tendonitis clinicians and highly regarded movement experts. I collected this information by travelling to seminars all over Europe for several years.

These methods will help us strengthen your knees and they also reduce patellar tendon overload through better biomechanics.

Fixes Problems Everyone Else Ignores

If you’re stuck and can’t make any more progress, the issue may not be your training, but something deeper.

For example, during my research I discovered 13 evidence-based rehab shortcuts and 11 connections between diet and tendon healing. These can influence tendon healing right down at the cellular level and if too many of them are causing problems, tendonitis rehab can take years.

This approach is unique to the Tough Tendons course, so you won’t find it elsewhere.

Created By Someone Who Had Tendonitis

My goal for this course was to offer solutions to every problem someone with patellar tendonitis can possibly have. To make this possible I first drew from my own experience with the injury and then asked my readers to chime in. The result:

Over 2,000 data points on the exact problems and barriers people with tendonitis face on their way back to 100%. That was my basis for the topic outline in the course and another reason why you won’t be able to find a more comprehensive resource about patellar tendonitis.

Has Already Been Used In Your Sport

No matter which sport you do, odds are somebody else doing the exact same sport has already used my advice to get better. For example, in my previous course for healthy knees I asked all participants to tell me more about them and here’s a list of sports they were doing:

• Basketball
• Cycling
• Volleyball
• Dancing
• Skiing
• Tennis
• Weightlifting
• Golf
• Walking
• Gymnastics
• Hiking
• American Football
• Track and Field
• Laser Tag
• Wrestling
• Running Marathons
• Rugby
• Lacrosse
• Crossfit
• Martial Arts
• Yoga
• Ultra-Marathon Running
• Trail Biking
• American College Hockey
• Swimming
• Trail Running
• Squash
• …..

There are probably many more I don’t even know about.

HOWEVER, many participants used my course just to stay active. Some of these folks only want to be able to walk their dog for example. Remember that this system is not limited to athletes.

Used By Professional Athletes

In 2013, I was invited to share my knowledge with the German National Volleyball Team because their athletic trainer, Mr. Bracceschi, was fascinated by the early version of this course, which he actually heard about from an Italian professional Volleyball player.

Once you’ve taken the course, you will recognize the techniques I’m going to share in the training of professional athletes from all sorts of different sports. They use it because this knowledge helps increase performance by reducing training downtime due to injury.

My material is also used in other professional sports, such as basketball:

... and kite surfing:

But this course is not just for athletes.

Works for Non-Athletes Too

You use the training in the course regardless of how fit you are. I’ve actually used these same exercises to train my 78-year old grandmother as well as my younger siblings. Take these stories for example:

Here are some of the results my work has achieved since I started helping people with tendonitis in 2011:

More Real World Results

In 2020 I asked all Tough Tendons participants how long they had needed to get back to sports. Here are the results:

Most were back to sports in less than 3 months, but even a recovery time of 6 months is amazing considering that many of those people had struggled with tendonitis for years.

The following is feedback about the course I received while I collected the data about recovery times:

Other results of my work:

 

Now just to be clear:

In spite of my best efforts doing research for years and collecting every possible bit of advice, I still can’t promise you specific results. After all, everyone is different. But I can promise you this:

Taking this course will boost your chances of success to unfair levels, like knowing all but one of next week’s lottery numbers. Or you could use one of these other options…

Yes, you have other options!

My readers have spent an average of $1,239 on treatments for their knee pain. I know, because I asked the 20,000+ people on my email newsletter a few years back and then did the math. So yes, you do have other options.

You could…

Do Nothing (“Resting”)

Resting works great for many different injuries, including most types of knee pain, but it only works for tendonitis if you do it the very first time your knee feels even slightly off.

Once you’ve had tendonitis for more than a few weeks, resting will no longer help you, because it doesn’t strengthen weak tendons, it won’t fix biomechanics, and it doesn’t optimize tendon healing at the cellular level.

I tried this option when I had tendonitis, as have countless others, and it only turned out to be a waste of time.

Try Expensive Medical Treatments

Cost: $500 – $2,000

Every week I get emails from readers asking about PRP and other expensive medical treatments and my answer is always the same:

There is no convincing evidence to show that PRP works for patellar tendonitis, but about 40% the people I’ve heard from reported an improvement after the injection. About 55% didn’t notice any change and a small percentage had more pain after the procedure.

So if money is not an issue for you and you have exhausted all other options, PRP may be worth a shot. An analogy I like to use is it’s like playing roulette and betting on black. Do you like gambling?

 

Go Through Physical Therapy

Cost: $2,400+ ($100/session x 3 sessions per week for two months)

There are some great physical therapists out there, but unfortunately, very few of them know about tendon rehab. Plus even with insurance, the cost of physical therapy can be steep and you’d also have to spend a few extra hours each week driving to appointments.

Learn it all on your own through trial and error

Cost: $10,000 and more (plus 1,000 hours of work)

You could also learn it all on your own. This will work for you if you like reading research papers, can live off a part-time job, don’t have any family commitments, and can spend a few days traveling to seminars each month.

I could pull it off because I was single and could travel to other countries at a moment’s notice. I would also disappear from my social life for weeks at a time and I burned through almost all of my savings, because I missed out on work.

Yes, you could learn it on your own, but why reinvent the wheel when I already did all the work for you?

If you’re still undecided, here’s my guarantee.

The Course Schedule

Once you’re enrolled you will be immediately be able to access the course materials with your smartphone, tablet, Smart-TV, or laptop. Here is a selection of the individual topics we will cover.

More Results of My Work

 

One More Thing…

It’s natural to hesitate before taking a big step like joining the Tough Tendons course, but ask yourself this:

How many more months are you willing to waste?

Time will pass regardless of what you do. You can’t get any of it back. The cruel part is that making an unusual decision that could improve the future is tough, like asking someone on a date. It requires a strong character.

Right now, I’m asking you to make one of these tough decisions: join Tough Tendons. In the worst case, you’ll spend the next 60 days taking my course for free. In the best case, you’ll get rid of your tendonitis forever.

I’d love to see you in the course.

– Martin Koban

It's Time to Get Your Life Back