The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Why training your tendons is important and 11 ways to do it.

Building muscle is simple.

Lift heavy things, rest, make sure you eat enough food, sleep, repeat.

For a beginner, progress is linear and relatively sudden.

You get quick feedback.

Your muscles get more defined.

You look a little leaner.

You can lift a little more each session. Friends and coworkers notice and comment on the changes.

New striations pop up. Clothes fit differently. You feel more capable dealing with the physical world.

You're hungrier and heavier, yet still managed to drop belt sizes.

All is well.

Muscle isn't the only thing you're impacting when you lift heavy things, though.

You're also imposing stress on your tendons and demanding an adaptive response.

You're training your tendons too.

Yet because tendons receive less blood flow than muscle,

and blood brings the nutrients and satellite cells used to repair and rebuild damaged tissue, they take a lot longer to

respond to training than muscle.

In one study, it took at least two months of training to induce structural changes in

the Achilles tendon, including increases in collagen synthesis and collagen density.

Other studies have found that it takes weeks to months of training to increase tendon stiffness.

Meanwhile, we see structural changes to muscle tissue with just eight days of training.

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