Tight ankles:
Do you have tight ankles? When you squat down, do your heels pop up off the ground? When you're running, especially when you're tired, do your feet start to dump, to pronate to the inside? If so, you might need to work on the dorsiflexion of your ankles. Hey, my name is Lucas. I am a yoga teacher, I'm a teacher trainer. I have struggled myself with tight ankles, specifically that dorsiflexion range, most of my life. If you're like me you've tried all these weird videos online
with slant boards, and boxes, and rubber bands, and tying up your legs. Not sure about you, but all I end up with is sore knees. I didn't really make any progress in my ankles. If you can relate, this video is for you. In this video we'll chat about the anatomy of your ankles, we'll talk about the risks of having tight ankles, why it can be such a problem, talk about some of the common mistakes that people make when they're stretching, and lastly we'll go over three poses that are very, very effective, for safely and effectively opening up your ankles, specifically in this dorsiflexion range.
A quick note here. If you're interested in plantar flexion, that's pointing your toes like this, please check the main youtube channel. We'll be updating videos on that range. For today we'll be focused on dorsiflexion only. As always, there's a PDF guide down below if you'd like to skip ahead and grab the poses that we'll be covering in this video. Let's start off by looking at the anatomy of your ankle joint.
Anatomy:
(1) The first thing you need to appreciate is that this joint is an engineering marvel. Just imagine every time you're running and striding, we're talking about hundreds of pounds of pressure, slam, slam, slam. It's an engineering miracle that your foot and ankle don't explode with every stride. So let's just take a moment to appreciate the ankle joint. Here's what we've got. Our tibia comes down the front, that's your shin bone, you can palpate yours as we're talking here,
(2) that's your shin bone coming down. On the lateral back side we have your fibula, a smaller but important supporting bone of your lower leg, and these two bones come down and they articulate with a bone, a weird floating bone, called your talus. Now I call it a floating bone in air quotes because it's not really floating. It's wrapped in ligaments, but it does float between your lower leg and your foot and your heel. We talk about the ankle joint as if it's just one joint, but
(3) truly it's a combination of joints. We have the place where your lower leg meets that talus, that floating bone, but also where your talus meets your calcaneus, your heel bone, and also where that talus articulates with the bones of your lower foot as well. Now the surfaces of these bones are covered in something called articular cartilage. If you imagine a chicken drumstick, if you were to pull it out that slippery white stuff on the chicken bone, that's articular cartilage.
(4) You have chicken bone cartilage too, it's right here, and you have quite a bit of it, about a quarter of an inch of articular cartilage. This is a synovial hinge joint, like a lot of other joints in the body. But it's unique in that it has this weird mortise and tenon structure. This mortise and tenon structure has been used in carpentry for hundreds of years. From an engineering perspective it's very, very strong, the only joint like this in the body.
(5) It needs to be this way so it can take that tremendous load, that tremendous pressure. So we're talking about ankle mobility. We look at the bones, we look at the structure here, and when we talk about opening up our ankle joint, what does that mean? Does that mean we take a screwdriver? No. When we talk about loosening up joints what we really mean are the muscles that limit the range of motion. Sometimes people get confused trying to stretch tendons, trying to stretch ligaments. Bad idea! We want to stretch muscles. And when you look at dorsiflexion of your ankle, the muscles involved.
Muscles Limiting Dorsiflexion:
(1) from an anatomical perspective are upstream of your ankle, specifically from our Achilles tendon, which we don't stretch, we get into your soleus, your gastrocnemius, and then there's a weird little sinewy one called plantaris. These three muscles; soleus, gastrocnemius, and plantaris, they're largely responsible for the ability of your ankle to dorsiflex or not. A couple of things about these muscles. The gastrocnemius actually crosses the knee joint, which means it's involved a little bit in knee flexion. Part of the reason it gets really tight,
(2) as does your plantaris, but that's a much smaller muscle. OK, so we've got tight ankles, we understand it's these tight muscles, who really cares right? I put my shoes on, nobody can really tell. Well here's why you should care. If you lack range of motion here, the problem is going to translate downstream or upstream. What downstream usually means is it could result in plantar fasciitis.
- If you lack range of motion at your ankle, you can make up for it by over stressing your plantar fascia. If you've never had plantar fasciitis, it feels like you're stepping on nails right here when you wake up in the morning. I'd highly encourage you to avoid it. As we move upstream, if you lack dorsiflexion you can over stress your Achilles tendon. Achilles tendinopathy, tendinitis, is very very common. As you go upstream, upstream knee problems are very common. You could aggravate your patellar tendon, your quadriceps tendon,
- there's even a correlation between tight ankles and ACL injuries, which is a major, major injury, you want to avoid. OK, so now we understand that tight ankles are a problem, we want to fix it. Not just so we can squat, but so we can take care of the the safety of our body, both downstream and upstream. But here's a question. Why the heck are our ankles so tight anyway? I mean, what's.
Why So Tight?
(1) The problem? We're walking all the time, seems like we're using our ankles. You certainly are, but the number one problem is look down at your feet, I'm not wearing shoes but probably you are. Those shoes you're wearing have an elevated heel. How do I know? Because 95 percent of all shoes everywhere in the world, Nike trainers, Reebok shoes, cowboy boots, high heeled shoes, you name it, they have an elevated heel-to-toe ratio.
(2) That might be four centimeters, it might be six, eight centimeters. It might be these crazy Nike Vapor Flys that are way up here. But what happens is when you wear a shoe from the age of I don't know, five, six, eight, years old, all the way to where you are now, with an elevated heel, those important calf muscles get shortened and tightened. To help you think about this, let's imagine my arm which is in full extension right now, let's imagine I was wearing a slightly elevated Nike running shoe since I was eight years old and my arm was slightly bent, well my biceps now are slightly shortened age 8,
(3) age 12, age 20, age 30. Now at age 30 I decide I want to go do a CrossFit WOD and I can't squat. Let me see if I can, nope I cannot. Why? Because my foot has been in a weird, elevated heel position for decades. I mention this because you need to understand you've probably spent decades shortening your calf muscles, it's going to take more than a couple of days to open them back up. Now the second reason, also important, is that we move in ways that are totally unnatural in our
(4) modern world, which means we almost never squat down. In any kind of natural living setting we would be squatting to poo, squatting to clean our clothes, squatting to gather water, to do dishes, probably cumulatively we'd spend at least 30 minutes in a full squat every day. Full squat dorsiflexion we're not doing it, we're missing it. OK, so what's the deal? There's tons.
Problem w/ Most Stretches:
(1) of calf stretches, why don't we just go out there and stretch? Well here's the challenge. Most of the calf stretches are a big problem and I'll share with you why. The number one thing that people do is they lift their heel up when they're stretching. Well I can still feel a stretch, you can, but from a physics perspective if our leverage point is instead of being here with our heel down, instead if it's here, suddenly the intensity of that stretch goes into your plantar fascia, your Achilles, and then into your calf muscles. Does it stretch your calves? Yeah, but not very well. Number two problem that we have when we're stretching our calf muscles is we have really poor leverage. What do I mean by that? Let's imagine I want to stretch my hamstrings. Look how big my torso is. I can get really great leverage on my hamstrings right. If I put my arms
(2) out even more I can really feel that. We just have this little teeny leverage point here, it's very, very difficult, which means we again need to get that heel down. So with that little teeny lever that we have we can still get some crank on our calf muscles. If my foot was really long out here, if I had a broomstick for leverage, it would be a lot easier. This is part of the challenge. When people do calf stretches they very often bounce. This is another challenge.
(3) That bouncing can be good for strength, it can be good for positively stressing these tissues, it's not going to help with flexibility. The final reason stretches don't work, many people don't realize that your soleus is type 1, slow twitch muscles primarily, but your gastrocnemius up here is primarily type 2, fast twitch muscles. Fast twitch muscles have a very, very high, stretch reflex. Stretch reflex is when the muscle spindles inside of your muscles that communicate directly to your spinal cord. They don't even talk to your brain, they just go
(4) straight to your spinal cord. And what they say is "Lucas be careful, you're going to break your ankle. Lucas be careful, you're going to sprain your ankle". And they tense up, tense up, tense up. You've felt that stretch reflex before, maybe in a forward bend where you feel like your body's fighting you. This is an innate response that we have to override. How do we override it With long hold passive stretches and almost nobody's doing that. They're bouncing around, they're not spending enough time. You're fighting your nervous system for 30 seconds, you haven't actually affected the soft tissues at all. So if those are the problems with stretching,
Best Practice:
- what are the best practices? Number one, heel down all the time. Get your leverage point here, so that your stretch can move up here. Number two, we need to hold things for a long time. How long do we need to hold them for? Two minutes per pose. And number three, you need to do this
- after, not before, anything explosive. I'm going to say that again. Do not do these stretches
- before you lift weights, do not do these stretches before you go for a run, it will feel good, but it is not safe or appropriate. I'm not sure why there's a lot of confusion about this, but deep stretching should be done after, not before. The published
- literature is conclusive. I have a bunch of videos on this if you'd like to check it out. When we're doing this type of mobilization work your joint will feel, and should feel, a little bit wobbly for two to three hours. Do this after, ideally do this in the night. Wake up the next day and little by little you'll gain mobility in your ankles. Let's take a look at the poses.
Straight Leg Runner’s Lunge:
(1) The first pose we'll do here is a straight leg runner's lunge. You need a wall. I'm using this weird mirrored wall, but I'd encourage you just use whatever wall you have. You'll need a timer, two minutes, start the timer and let's get into the pose. I'll place my forearms on the wall, my back leg, my left leg in this case, it needs to be all the way straight, with my heel down.My front leg I want to be completely worthless, meaning I'll pop up on my toes
(2) or I'll turn my foot on its side, it doesn't really matter. I want to take 90 percent of the weight into my heel in the back side. Remember we chatted about the most common mistake people make when stretching their calves is they lift their heel up. Make sure you ground down, drive the weight down into your back heel and breathe here. My front leg, again, is totally light and worthless, all the pressure is going back into my back heel. When we do these Science of Stretching poses, we use a very specific breathing technique.
(3) We inhale through our nose for four. Exhale through your mouth to the count of eight. As we spoke about earlier, your stretch reflex in your calf muscles is very, very strong. This breathing exercise helps it turn off the stretch reflex and allows you to go deeper into the pose, actually affecting your muscles, not just fighting your nervous system. As much as you can, relax your calf muscles. It's easier said than done, but try to press into the wall. Relax your calf muscles, drive the weight back into your heel.
(4) The third thing to keep in mind is your time. Two-minute holds are necessary so we can overcome that stretch reflex and actually start to affect some change. Good. Release your leg. We'll switch sides, two-minute timer, this time my right leg is back, my left leg is forward. Press your forearms into the wall, your front leg should be pretty much useless, kick the weight back into your heel and breathe here. So the three principles of practice in order.
(5) Number one is wet noodle and wet noodle teaches us is that our muscles they stretch best when fully relaxed. So if I think of my calf muscles like wet noodles, they certainly don't feel like wet noodles but I try to think of them that way, that'll help me to relax deeper into the pose. Principle number two is called breathe to relax, and when I use this specific breathing pattern, in for four through my nose, out for eight through my mouth, it helps to reduce my stretch reflex and allows me to go deeper in the pose. The third principle
(6) is one of the most often overlooked and it's called time under passive tension. In this pose we're aiming for two minutes and two minutes is kind of our baseline for any kind of pose. That gives us enough time to overcome our nervous system and enough time to actually affect change in those calf muscles. Remember here in this straight leg version we're targeting our gastrocnemius muscles, the upper calf muscles, and our plantaris, that smaller but relevant little muscle that also crosses the knee joint. When our leg is straight, our gastroc gets stretched. When our knee is bent, it's mostly our soleus. We're at two minutes, let's release and shake it out. We'll now do a bent leg version specifically for our soleus. This is called a wall lunge, so
Knee-to-Wall Lunge:
(1) as the name suggests I'll have the wall in front of me. My back foot I drop my heel on the ground like a warrior pose from yoga. With your foot have it just a couple of inches from the wall. I'd like you to bend your knee past your toe, hit the wall, and then pause here for a moment we'll talk a little bit about alignment. My goal here is to keep my knee stable, hence the wall. My back heel's down so that I can relax into the pose more. Relax should be an air quote, as this is an intense pose.
(2) I can rest my arms on top of the leg, but I want to drive the weight down, down, down, into my heel here. A couple of things to think about. Don't let your knee dump to the inside. Take your fingers, you can poke around back here, you should feel your soleus muscle nice and tight under tension. If you don't feel it under tension you can scoot your foot a little further back. I'll show you how to do that in just a moment.
(3) If your heel is popping up off the ground it's a no-go. Scoot your feet closer towards the wall. If you don't feel much tension you could pull your foot a little bit further away from the wall and again drive down into your heel. This is going to get really intense, really quickly. If it's too intense, you could put your fingers on the floor for support. Just be careful that your knee doesn't drop to the inside. The key thing is that the weight is heavy, heavy down into your heel, so that we can drive that stretch from that leverage point up into your soleus muscle specifically.
- Let's get back to our breathing. Inhale for four. Exhale eight. The role of the wall here is simply to stabilize. It helps you to stay safer and helps you to avoid putting excess strain on your knee. Is it necessary? No, you could do it without the wall. In fact, we'll do a variation here in a moment.
- But especially when you're starting, this variation can be really, really helpful, for keeping your knee stable and supported. It can also help you to focus on driving the weight down into your heel. Let's switch sides. So again start off with your foot at whatever distance, usually about four fingers distance from the wall is a good starting point. My back heel is down, I'll start my timer and then I'll sink my knee toward the wall. Take a minute to find your alignment here and we'll breathe into our left side.
- If you feel your quad working too much, again, you can drop your fingers down onto the floor, you could place your hands on top of your knee. Imagine your left heel, so your front heel is as heavy as possible, drive the weight down to that heel. That'll get you the best soleus stretch possible. Yes. So a good sign that you're getting fatigued is that you're unable to do that exhale for eight. In which case you can put one hand down on the floor for support. Continue to drive that weight scoot my foot a little bit further from the wall, driving the way down into my heel, breathing here. And slowly release. You can punch out that stretch. We'll move into our final stretch,
Banded Warrior lunge:
(1) which is a banded lunge. The banded lunge again is targeting our soleus muscle. And we'll start off by putting the band right around our lower ankle on our right foot, and I'll put the band across the arch of my back foot, and I'll pull the band up on top of my shoulder. If you don't have a rubber band like this they're very inexpensive. It's an exercise band, you can also use a fixed strap, but the rubber band works better. I'll separate my feet until I get some nice tension on my ankle and then I'll lunge forward, with my knee moving directly
(2) over my big toe, and I'll hold here. This type of banded stretch has been used in research and some people theorize that the band is actually pulling that floating talus bone backwards. Personally, I don't think that's what's happening. I think the advantage here of having the band is it drives your heel down which gives you an even better leverage point to access your soleus, but who knows. My feeling is that any kind of pressure that a rubber band could put is negligible compared to the pressure that you would get from, for example, running three kilometers, or doing hill sprints. In this pose, if you feel
(3) comfortable, you can allow your knee to move out over your big toe, but just make sure it doesn't dump to the inside. Keep your knee tracking over the big toe and, if anything, it can even move a little bit to the outside. Big toe mound stays down, your breath stays steady in for four. Out for eight. Just like in our previous pose, if you find your quads fatigue you, you can lift for a moment. But keep principle number three, keep that tension on your ankle and you can ease back into the pose. If you needed to, you could also use that wall again to alleviate a little bit of pressure. Your right quads can get pretty frizzle frazzle fried here.
(4) So if that's the case, give yourself support, but continue to drive the weight down into your heel on the front side. Good. Slowly release. Let's get rid of this band. Again, if you don't have a band, the wall stretch that we just did a moment ago, the wall lunge, is a perfectly fine alternative. I'll hook the band around my lower ankle, separate my feet until I'm in a lunge stance. I like to pull the band up over my shoulder, hit start on my two-minute timer, and off we go again.
(5) You might find that you need to wiggle or adjust to find the pose, totally fine, but let's keep tension throughout. If and when we feel comfortable, I'll start to allow my knee to move forward, move forward, move forward over my big toe, and again the main purpose of the band, my theory, is to keep that heel driving down. When your heel's driving down the stretch goes up into the muscle, which is what we're looking for. Just want to reiterate here, these stretches are meant to be done after, not before, training. You should never do this before a deep squat. You should never do this before going for a run. If you do it before a gentle workout, that's fine, but keep in mind for a period now of
- about two to three hours you're gonna have some joint laxity in that ankle, you're gonna have weakness in your lower leg. This is by design, it's not permanent. This is the signalling you've been telling your body in order to affect change. It's necessary, but you need to respect the timing of these exercises and use them appropriately. Again, if you start to feel fatigued like I am, put your fist on the wall. That can give you a little bit of extra support. Continue to drive the weight back into your heel.
- If you need to give your quads a break, you can lift and then back in heavy, down into your heel, getting that really intense stretch in your soleus muscle. Slowly release out of this. So if you found those poses really, really challenging, so did I. You can see my legs were shaking, I'm sweating, they're really difficult poses. Remember you've spent years, in many cases decades, tightening up your calf muscles. These are big strong muscles, it's going to take some energy and some effort to open them up. Please remember these are for after a workout, not before. Hope you found this post helpful.
- If you'd like more science-based yoga videos, please hit subscribe down below. There's a PDF down below if you'd like these poses in a worksheet format. I answer all my own questions and comments down below, so if you have comments please drop them down below. Lastly, you can find my teaching schedule at yogabody. com. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you in the next post.
Stiff Ankles? 3 Stretches!:
| Stretch Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Wall Calf Stretch | Stand facing a wall, place hands against it at shoulder height. Step one foot back, keeping the heel on the ground. Lean forward until feeling a stretch in the calf. Hold for 30 seconds and switch legs. |
| Towel Calf Stretch | Sit on the floor with legs extended. Loop a towel around the ball of one foot, gently pulling it towards you while keeping the knee straight. Hold for 30 seconds and switch legs. |
| Stair Calf Stretch | Stand on a step with the balls of your feet on the edge and heels hanging off. Lower heels below the step level until feeling a stretch in the calf. Hold for 30 seconds, then rise back up. Repeat as needed. |
Calf Stretches Relieve Stiffness
1. Q: Why are calf stretches useful for stiff ankles? A: Calf stretches assist to enhance ankle flexibility by focused on the muscular tissues and tendons inside the calves, which are connected to the ankle joint. Stretching these muscle groups can alleviate stiffness and decorate ankle mobility.
Q: How often need to one perform calf stretches to relieve stiff ankles? A: It's endorsed to perform calf stretches regularly, preferably every day or at least numerous times every week. Consistent stretching can regularly improve ankle flexibility and decrease stiffness. Q: What are 3 powerful calf stretches to help with stiff ankles? A: Three calf stretches which could assist with stiff ankles consist of the standing calf stretch (wall stretch), seated calf stretch, and downward dog yoga pose. Q: Is it everyday to experience some soreness while doing calf stretches for stiff ankles? A: Mild soreness or a stretching sensation is everyday at some point of calf stretches. However, if there's sharp or severe pain, it is crucial to ease off the stretch to prevent damage. Consult a healthcare expert if pain persists. Q: Can calf stretches advantage individuals who spend lengthy hours sitting or standing? A: Yes, calf stretches can be especially useful for people who've sedentary jobs or spend prolonged intervals sitting or standing. Stretching the calves helps save you stiffness and keeps ankle mobility, that may alleviate soreness associated with extended sitting or standing.