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This is Brent coming at you with another
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that extremely stubborn ankle complex. I know a lot of you have been looking
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for something to help improve extensibility, specifically of the calf,
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the gastroc, and soleus complex. Now at this point I'm going to assume that
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you've already worked on your release techniques as well as your static and
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active stretching, and as we go through this progression you're going to understand
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from an educational standpoint, why setting that foundation for your clients
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is going to be really important from a queuing perspective. Dynamic stretching
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is a wonderful way to maintain extensibility, it's not a great way to
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get there. It's also a wonderful way to get somebody warmed up for sporting and
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higher intensity daily activity, where we're going to require extensibility at
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a higher tempo. I'm going to have my friend Leanne come out and help me
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demonstrate this stretch. Now, the first thing we're going to use is just a
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prisoner squat. So we need to go back to our kinetic chain checkpoints and
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make sure everything is optimally aligned, because if we let her compensate,
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we've been working on our lower leg dysfunction, we're not going to get out
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of this stretch what we need. So I'm going to have Leanne go into prisoner
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squat position which is hands just behind her head, she's going to be lined
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up with second toes pointing forward, I know some of you don't squat
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like that normally, optimally we should have the extensibility to do that squat
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with second toe pointing forward, and feet underneath our hips, which your hips
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are just underneath your ASIS. When she squats down I'm going to be watching to
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make sure she doesn't flatten out or turn out this way. Now the big queue that
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we want to make sure happens is, I'm going to have Leanne turn sideways here,
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is that we've got optimal tibia-torso angle. Remember our tibia and our torso should
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stay parallel. A big compensation pattern for those with lower leg dysfunction,
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those with calf tightness, is that they'll not get much forward
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translation of the knee at the tibia, and get an excessive forward lean in the
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torso. So I'm going to have Leanne go ahead and descend into her squat and
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make sure that she's bringing those knees forward. And you can see there
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at first she wanted to get into the back end of that excessive forward lean, I
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just gave her a little queue, pulled that knee a little farther forward. Go ahead
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and sit up, squeeze your glutes, sit straight down for me.
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Good. You can see there we got a little bit better forward translation of the
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knee. Good, sit back down, good tibia torso angle, good, let's speed up a little
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bit. So as we're progressing our dynamic stretching, they're starting to get that
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they have to pull their knees forward a little bit, activate that tibialis
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anterior to get a good squat going, then we can take advantage of progressing our
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dynamic stretch in speed knowing that they're going to have to move at a
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fairly quick tempo while they're playing their sport or their higher intensity
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daily activity. Once she gets good at this squat form I can start progressing
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this exercise a little bit. Since it's my tibialis anterior that translates my
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knees forward, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have Leanne put a band
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right around her ASIS. This is going to create an anterior to posterior pull.
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That anterior to posterior pull is going to ensure that her tibialis anterior has to
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be really active. Now, warning, this is one of those super bands but it's not
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one of the huge strong bands. It doesn't take a whole lot of anterior to
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posterior pull to get the benefit of this exercise. If you use a huge band all
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you're really going to do is jack up your squat mechanics really badly. So I'm
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going to have Leanne once again go into her prisoner squat, and she's going to
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sit back - I'm sorry - a better queue would be to sit straight down
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maintaining that tibia - torso angle. I'm only going to allow her go to go down as
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far as she can as long as she maintains that angle. Good. Making sure she's
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squeezing her glutes, driving her hips forward against that band on the way up,
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that way we get a little glute activity too, kill two birds with one stone. Good,
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can you feel it a little bit in your calves? -Yeah. Good. Once again we can start to
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speed this progression up a little bit. As Leanne gets more extensibility we
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can go another step further. Dynamic flexibility is all about increasing
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neuromuscular control, in essence coordination and stability, at the tempo
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of the activity we're working on. So I'm going to have her now go from a dual leg
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stretch like we're doing now, to a single leg stretch. So I'm going to
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have her descend into her squat, and then she's going to step into a single leg
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calf stretch on this side. She basically just stepped into that wall stretch that
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you had been working on during your static stretching. So if you've already
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planted those seeds during your static and active stretching, this shouldn't be
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a difficult progression to get into. Descend into her squat, make sure
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she maintains good tibia-torso angle, then she's going to step through, good
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triple extension mechanics, glute tight, quad tight, this time heel pressed
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through the floor and back. Let's see that one more time. Now, for all of my
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human movement science geeks out there, you know that the fibularis muscles also
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play a role in lower leg dysfunction as our primary everters. They'll flatten out
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the foot and turn it out just a little bit. I can get a little fibularis
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extensibility out of this exercise by using the same queue I did in my static
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stretching. So in the static stretching we talked about how if you step out just
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a little bit like this in your wall stretch, place the weight on the front
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leg, that forces your tibia on this side to come in this way, which instead of
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being foot on tibia inversion, is actually tibia on foot inversion. So
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we're going to get a nice lengthening of our fibularis or peroneals muscles as
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well. All I have to do is queue her, we're going to do the exact same thing, you're
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going to keep your feet straight, but I'm going to have you step out about 30
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degrees, so we're going to have you step out to about here. -Alright. So let's try that.
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Down into your squat, good, and step out just a little bit. You feel that just a
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little bit more in your outer calf, or your peroneal area? -Yeah. Good, and then
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back. And then we can have her do the same thing. We could set up markers on the
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floor so we keep her up nice and straight. I'm going to have you step to right about here,
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30 degrees out. Let's have you do a couple more.
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Usually I find 10 to 20 repetitions on each leg works pretty well for
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dynamic stretching. We can go through a couple of different progressions as I
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mentioned before: both speed, so you can slowly start to speed this up as long as
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they can maintain good form, and then of course we have all these wonderful
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stability progressions, all these complexity progressions. We went from
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just a regular prisoner squat with a nice queue for the anterior translation
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of the knee, then we went to the anterior to posterior pull for that nice prisoner
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squat, then we went to squat to single leg calf stretch, and then, of course, we
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went to squat to single a calf stretch with the fibularis or peroneal
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modification. I hope you enjoy this video, I hope you get a ton of