Tendinous tissue properties after short- and long-term functional overload: Differences between controls, 12 weeks and 4 years of resistance training.

Despite large differences in muscle strength and size, years of resistance training did not induce tendon hypertrophy. Both short-term and long-term overload demonstrated similar increases in high-force mechanical and material stiffness, but reduced elongation/strain over the whole force/stress range occurred only after years of overload, indicating a force/strain specific time-course to these adaptations.