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Slant Board Calf Stretch

This video will show you how to perform a calf stretch on a slant board. Learn the correct form to reduce the risk of injury and target the muscles in the lower leg. Increase flexibility and improve range of motion in five simple steps.

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Transcript

00:00 - 00:03This is Brent coming at you with another calf stretch. In this video we're going to
00:03 - 00:08go over the slant board stretch as an alternative to the wall stretches I showed
00:08 - 00:12you before. Although that's a great stretch and it's something that you
00:12 - 00:16should have in your repertoire, to get the most out of it is actually fairly
00:16 - 00:21complicated to teach. So I'm going to show you guys how this stretch fulfills all of
00:21 - 00:26our criteria for a great stretch. It supports the bottom of the foot so we
00:26 - 00:30don't take the chance of stretching out those intrinsics of the foot, those
00:30 - 00:34intrinsic flexors that support the medial arch. We're going to keep the hip in
00:34 - 00:39a neutral position, so none of this long sit, pulling up with a strap, which puts
00:39 - 00:42the hip into flexion, knee into total extension, pulling up into dorsiflexion
00:42 - 00:48which has the potential to over stretch that sciatic nerve over time. We can put
00:48 - 00:53a considerable amount of force through a slant board, right. We have our entire
00:53 - 00:58body weight contributing to this force, and lastly, this is where things get
00:58 - 01:04really really simplified, in that wall stretch I had to work really hard to get
01:04 - 01:09somebody from that everted, turned-out position, that we're trying to correct
01:09 - 01:15with a calf stretch, into this inverted and dorsiflexed position. With a slant
01:15 - 01:20that becomes two simple queues. I think if you have tried that wall stretch I
01:20 - 01:24showed, you realize it takes a little bit of effort. I'm going to have my friend, Yvette,
01:24 - 01:28come out, she's going to help me demonstrate. So, first things first, the
01:28 - 01:34reason I've never showed this stretch before, I hadn't found these OPTP slants
01:34 - 01:38before, and this is not just an endorsement for a product, slant boards
01:38 - 01:42had the tendency to be really expensive, like in that hundred to two hundred
01:42 - 01:46dollar range, it makes it very hard for me to look at a client or a patient and
01:46 - 01:50go, 'hey I need you to get this for home', not to mention some of the slant boards
01:50 - 01:53I've had in the past were a little rickety on top of being expensive. These
01:53 - 01:59OPTP slants you can get on Amazon for 21 bucks, and it comes with two, if I beat
01:59 - 02:03them up it doesn't matter a terrible amount, they seem to last
02:03 - 02:07three to six months anyway, and then I just buy another set. I can refer a
02:07 - 02:12client to get these for home, so I know that in between our sessions they're
02:12 - 02:16continually working on gaining that dorsiflexion. Now, let's get back to the
02:16 - 02:20queues on this stretch so I can show you how simple this really is. Rather
02:20 - 02:24than that wall stretch where we had to turn the foot in and work on tibia on
02:24 - 02:29foot inversion and take a step sideways and do all this queuing, all I have to
02:29 - 02:33ask Yvette to do is go, "okay stand up on the slant board, hold on to this for
02:33 - 02:38support." She's going to turn her feet a little pigeon-toed, so pinky toe pointing
02:38 - 02:43forward, or fifth metatarsal pointing forward, and then once she gets into a
02:43 - 02:48little bit of rotation this way, all I need to do is externally rotate her legs
02:48 - 02:52a little bit to pop her arches back up, and I can do that with a simple queue of
02:52 - 03:00squeeze your glutes, and stand up nice and tall. Alright, so now we have a nice calf
03:00 - 03:04stretch. We have the hip in neutral position, so no sciatic nerve issues, we
03:04 - 03:09have the foot in inversion, so that's not a problem. We have a considerable
03:09 - 03:12amount of weight with our whole body weight in the stretch, and it's
03:12 - 03:16absolutely no effort for the patient or client. This actually, for the
03:16 - 03:19most part, unless somebody has arthrokinematic dysfunction that you're going to
03:19 - 03:23have to take care of, I actually find this more effective than doing manual
03:23 - 03:28stretching on a patient or client. Now, the only problem with the OPTP slant
03:28 - 03:34is that the angle isn't very steep. So this is great for somebody who just came
03:34 - 03:41in who is very tight, but after a few weeks of doing this they're going to get as
03:41 - 03:44much as they can out of the OPTP slant and we're going to have to find something
03:44 - 03:52a little bit more intense. So we're going to trade in two pieces of cheap foam, and
03:52 - 03:59by cheap I just mean less expensive, which I love, for another piece of cheap
03:59 - 04:04foam, which is the half foam roll. So if I take this half foam roll and put it flat
04:04 - 04:09side up, when Yvette comes and steps on it and does the exact same queues,
04:09 - 04:14she's pinky toe pointed forward, she gets her heels down on the
04:14 - 04:17floor, and she can be leaned back a little bit, that's okay and then she
04:17 - 04:23squeezes her glutes, we're right back to having a nice slant board, bottom of foot
04:23 - 04:29supported, she's in that inverted position. Squeeze your glutes, and
04:29 - 04:33you can see here that the half foam roll is actually a fairly steep angle. So this
04:33 - 04:38gives her a lot more to work on. For Yvette, personally, I would actually give her
04:38 - 04:42the half foam roll for home, rather than the OPTP slants because the OPTP
04:42 - 04:48slants looked a little not challenging enough for her. So there you go.
04:48 - 04:52I want you to learn that wall stretch. That wall stretch is important
04:52 - 04:55in the previous video. It's important that you have a technique that requires
04:55 - 05:00absolutely no equipment. All of you who have runners with tight calves who
05:00 - 05:05end up doing these events and need some way to warm up beforehand, they need
05:05 - 05:11something with no equipment, but for your clubs get something that you can use for
05:11 - 05:15a slant board, it will make your life a ton easier, and then make sure that if
05:15 - 05:20your clients have lower leg dysfunction, your patients have lower leg dysfunction
05:20 - 05:25and some sort of ankle, foot, lower leg injury, that you get this stuff for home
05:25 - 05:28so that they can continue working on it. I hope you get a huge results, I
05:28 - 05:32look forward to talking to you again soon.

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