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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, in
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this video we're doing static release
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techniques for the calf, or foam rolling, self myofascial release, you've
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probably heard those terms before. Now, the calves tend to get bound down in lower
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leg dysfunction. The common thing that we see in lower leg dysfunction is a
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combination of eversion, that's the feet flatten out, and external rotation,
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which is the feet turnout, and the inability to dorsiflex. So the
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plantar flexors are tight, restricting our ability to dorsiflex.
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I'm going to have my friend, Laura, come out and help me demonstrate this exercise. Now,
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because we know what this lower leg dysfunction generally looks like, we
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can't kind of predict where our trigger points are going to be. So, the lateral
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gastroc here, does all three of the joint actions that I talked about before. It
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resists dorsiflexion as a planter flexor, it will cause some external rotation of
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the tibia, and it will evert my foot. So we expect to see a lot of trigger points in
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this upper lateral portion of the calf, or the lateral head, the outside
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head of this two-headed muscle here, being your gastroc. The other place
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we commonly see trigger points is your soleus. Now, this gets a little
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complicated, but your soleus will definitely resist plantar flexion, it can
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also do some external rotation of the tibia, as well as some eversion because
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of where the Achilles tendon attaches on the calcaneus. The most common places to
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find trigger points for the soleus are going to be here, right
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kind of in between the bottom of those two gastroc heads, which happens to be the
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middle of the belly of the soleus, as well as up here, which I know that's
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underneath the gastroc, or it kind of looks like I'm pointing at the gastroc,
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but the trigger point you guys will feel is way up in the corner here, right where
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the gastroc even starts to thin out a little bit. So I'm going to have Laura go ahead
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and sit down. I'm using a softball here, you can use a
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foam roll, that's fine, I'll kind of explain that here in a second. She's
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going to find the most tender point in her calf, which generally for Laura is
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right exactly where I talked about those points being. It's either right here in
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the middle of the head of her soleus, or right here on her lateral gastroc in
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the middle of that belly. Kind of just getting back to the foam roll versus
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the softball, I do find that as tendinous as the calf is, there's a lot of connective
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tissue, that a foam roll might not be enough pressure per square inch. At the
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end of the day all static release techniques are a matter of squishing
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muscles. We're just taking something hard and squishing the muscle between that
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object and bone. So by using a soft ball I'm reducing the amount of surface area,
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increasing the pressure per square inch. This has a huge advantage, I've seen
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people use the foam roll and then lift their butt up to try to get enough pressure, but
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chances are we're going to have to hold this position statically on a trigger
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point for 30 seconds to 2 minutes before we're going to feel a release, and
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it's that release that we're looking for to get us an increase in extensibility
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to get that trigger point to calm down. So Laura's using a softball here. If she
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wanted to progress even further she could actually put this leg on top of it,
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and then she's just going to hold, and you can see her face, 'yeah I feel that'. She's just
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going to hold that position until that trigger point goes away. Once again,
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it's going to take 30 seconds to 2 minutes for that to happen, you should
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feel a significant amount of discomfort reduce. Don't roll back and forth.
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I see that a lot, I see a lot of people roll over this
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spot over and over again. The thing that you're probably most likely to do in
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that scenario is start stimulating your pain receptors, which could make your
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trigger point worse. I hope you enjoy the video, I
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hope you enjoy this technique, great for anybody with lower leg dysfunction.
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Once again, this was static release for your gastroc and soleus complex. Talk to
