Holy Gastrocnemius Batman!!!
Do you ever think about your ankles?
And how they are affecting other joints?
Poor ankle mobility is one of the main factors when we think about poor squat movement.
Lifestyle is a contributing factor, the shoes we were have a heal lift in them.
As opposed to being bare foot.
We don't squat further down day to day than sitting on a chair.
"But I don't need to be able to squat in full range"
You mean you don't want your body to fully function like it should?
From an exercise perspective,
and we are all active,
the squat is a foundation movement which we should all be performing.
But first we are going to start to fix it one joint at a time.
Starting with your ankles.
Ok, let's get testing.
Do we have enough movement in our ankles?...
Get a measuring tape, measure fives inches from the wall and draw a line.
Place your foot on the line so there is five inches from the top of your big toe to the wall.
Keeping your foot pointing straight and fully flat on the floor we're going to try and touch our knee to the wall.
No cheating now, foot straight, knees straight, hips straight and your foot not lifting from the floor!
Pretty hard, huh?
So, you can or you can't do it?...
You can't?...
Here's the FIX!
We're going to mobilise your ankle using this easy door frame stretch.
Holding onto either side of the door frame we are going to crouch down, put our foot up against the door frame and try get our heal as close to the door frame as possible.
Now we stand.
It's important at this point to note that if we need to increase the stretch it isn't just a matter of leaning forward
but closing the gap from our hips the door frame, bring your hips towards the door frame.
Hold each part of the stretch for 2min.
This can be performed regularly during the day, but at least once a day as a minimum would be advised until we are able to perform the above "five inch test" with ease.
The second part of this stretch involves keeping your foot in position, but bringing your hips back
and pushing your knee towards the door frame.
Limited joint range of movement equals limited free movement.