What abuse they take. They get twisted. Forced to balance on high heeled shoes. Pounded on. Ignored. Except when they hurt. So, they become locked up. So much so that they are often a major contributor to knee and back pain. Your ankles can literally be a pain.

Here’s a good one. You are on vacation in Italy. You are visiting the Vatican (a pretty spectacular place BTW). You, and your significant other, have taken the elevator to the top of the dome, from where you spy a beautiful view of Rome. It is time to go back down and you decide you will take the stairs and race the elevator down. You tell your significant other to time you. Off you go! The stairs are those old, long ramp style stairs and each one is a little different than the other. About halfway down you land off kilter on an ankle, and you get a bad pain. You take a few minutes and limp down the rest of the way. As you walk around Rome it becomes more and more painful, and swells up like a balloon. Then you try to find ice to put on your ankle. An impossible task in Rome! They should make it an event in a reality show. “Your job, here in Italy, is to find a bag of ice and bring it back to the group.” It can’t be done! Anyway, you finally manage to find some at your hotel and spend the next couple of days trying to stay off of your ankle. The swelling goes down and you continue on with your vacation. You, in fact, go back to running within three days.

Fast forward a bit. You never bothered with any kind of rehab. It feels better so you just carry on as if it had never happened. Years later a knee starts giving you trouble. You keep running on it. One day it really hurts. It stiffens up and you have to go into surgery to have a bit of cartilage removed. Sigh. In case you haven’t guessed, yes, that was me. 20 years ago. It was at that point of knee surgery that I really had to question if what I was doing was smart exercise. My decision was that it wasn’t smart at all. That was when I branched out and learned everything I could about other forms of training and exercise. Yoga and running worked well for several years but I realized there was a LOT more to learn. One of those was about the flexibility/mobility relationship in all the joints of our bodies. In my case one of the big trouble spots are my ankles. If you have ignored old injuries remember—-they don’t just go away. They have to be fixed and put right again. I remember my Yoga teacher, Beryl Bender, telling me very early on that she had seen many people begin her class, and soon after develop sore areas. Areas where they had injured them selves sometimes 3o years earlier! Ankles are a very common trouble spot for this. You get injured, it alters how you walk, and joint and muscles adapt (not in a favorable way) to the new range of motion. Time to fix it don’t you think?

Your ankles may be locked up tight. I can’t tell you how many clients I have seen with bad ankles. They had either twisted them many times in the past, or constantly punished that area by wearing high heels every day. Some miraculously walked around with twisted, collapsed feet and no pain, BUT if I asked them to squat their ankles stopped them dead. Weak/tight ankles can do more than just prevent you from squatting right. They can be a major contributor to knee pain, back pain, even neck and shoulder pain. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that your feet and ankles might hurt. Let’s see if we can start to fix it.

The 2 words we need to clear up first are flexibility and mobility. There is a big difference between them. Flexibility is where muscles, tendons etc, stretch. A common flexibility problem in the ankle are tight calf muscles. They are often very tight. More on that in a moment. Mobility is the range of motion of your joints. This requires movement based exercise with strength. So let’s at least start to tackle the flexibility issue. If you have read the FFTV Blog  And on the 8th day was created the Burpee (part one that is) you have learned why squatting is so important for losing fat, getting leaner and feeling better. Tight calves will stop you from getting there. An easy way to stretch tight calves is the wall stretch. If you have read books on this flexibility or exercise I am sure you have seen this one. Trouble is it is always taught the wrong way. The magic of exercise always happens in the details. I have shown people the right way to do an exercise and it totally changes everything for the better. Here is the right way (see pic #1).  First and foremost you have to do this in bare feet. Running shoes, in particular are one of the absolute worst shoes to stretch or exercise in. Stay tuned for episodes about bare foot exercise and why it is so much more effective.

Calf wall stretch

Back to the calf stretch. Stand about a foot in front of a wall. Put your hands on the wall and step one of your legs back. How far back will depend on how tight you are back there so you will have to experiment. The calf of the back leg is the one you are stretching. Now lean forward into the wall. Lean from your BACK ankle. Do not lean from your back or hips. Picture yourself like the leaning tower of Pisa (speaking of Italy) and lean forward as one structure. Your heel (of your back foot) must stay down on the floor. As you lean you will feel a stretch.

Hold it right there! You are not done yet. Here is where the real magic happens. Remember how I said weak/stiff ankles can make for sore knees? In your case it may or may not be the reason, but better to fix what you can anyway. Check your back foot. Is it pointing straight ahead?  Is the arch of the foot collapsing and hitting the floor? These are the real fixes that all those supposed “expert” books miss. Here’s how to fix them. Point your foot straight ahead. Now glance at your knee. If its rotated inwards towards your big toe you need to get it to rotate out in line with your 2nd and 3rd toes. Squeeze the butt in that leg. Squeeze it hard. If  at first have trouble doing this keep practicing. Once you get it you will feel a much more intense stretch in your calf. It may even go all the way up your leg and that is good. See if the butt squeeze lifted your arch off the floor. If not work on rotating your lower leg outwards, but do this without moving your foot. Feel that? That is a much better calf stretch.

Knee turned inwards. It also collapses the arch of your foot. You have to fix this.

Knee rotated outwards. This also lifts the arch of the foot. This is good!

If you weren’t to do this you may miss the actual tight area that gives you trouble. Why? Because your body has learned how to avoid stretching that area and you have to gently force it back into line. Now hold the stretch for at least 30 seconds. If that isn’t enough hold longer. Learn to picture the muscle itself relaxing. Imagine warm towels wrapped around it. Imagine there are lungs in the muscle and you are breathing in and out of them. You may have to hold for several minutes. Hold until it has no choice but to relax. Now change your foot position. Turn your foot slightly inwards. Now do everything the same. You may feel a stretch in a different part of your calf. Now turn your foot outwards and do the same thing again. Find which position, or positions, causes the greatest stretch and work only those areas. If you are very tight in there you need to do this daily. For the absolute best results you may also need to”roll out the trigger points” before you stretch. If you don’t your results will be only so-so. Stay tuned for more episodes on how to “role out the trigger points.”  This fitness stuff is definitely an ongoing process.

There are other ways to work out the tightness in your calves. Other stretches or Yoga. For now let’s learn one thing at a time. Stay with this and let me know how it is working for you. There will be other Blogs and FFTV episodes that cover all that stuff too. Some of the episodes will feature real experts that you can finally learn how to do this stuff the right way. Your exercise will improve and if that improves so will your confidence and if your confidence improves you will take off like a rocket! Slimmer. stronger, leaner, healthier. It can be yours. You just got to learn how to do it.

That’s it for this…..oops sorry. What about the mobility you spoke of Robert?  Well—–do you feel a pinch in the front of your ankle as you do the calf stretch? If so, that is a mobility problem. The pinch you feel IS NOT tightness. It is your joint impinging. In other words it is not tracking smoothly. You have to re teach it how to track correctly. That funny enough is the subject of part 2 Ankles And Calves. What A Pain.

Best,

Robert Troch

This high school kid has tight ankles, and other problems. He has no business doing this exercise until he fixes things.

Now this guy has flexible and strong ankles!