I’m glad you found this blog, your tight ankles and calves depend on it.
So I work at Orangetheory Fitness. Great workout, have you tried it?
In my experience it consists of what used to be majority of the time 1/2 of hour running/jogging/walking to 1/3 of an hour doing those same repetitive things. Which some may think is better, however as Kelly Starret of the acclaimed book Becoming a Supple Leopard says on average People tend to take on average about 10,000 steps/day. That’s about 5,000 on one foot each day. Tack on to that poor positioning and its a recipe of disaster to knee, hip, spine and at the root… Calves and ankles can feel horrible. These statistics don’t even tend to include exercise like running, cycling etc
Now generally Pain and tightness from your feet start from your heel and move upstream connecting into a tightly packed space known as your your Gastroc and Soleus (your calves). Sometimes it can seem as tight as a steel cord just waiting to snap as the slightest off position (position fault) or sometimes it can just give in from the inflexibility.
Not to scare you all away from walking, running or exercising it just goes to show if you ignore the warning signs and aches it can add up. You wouldn’t want to wait until your car blows up before you take it in for service… Hopefully that’s similarly your mindset when it comes to your body. Personally, as soon as I feel pain, or discomfort (I’ll admit I sometimes have ignored tightness) I tend to try and see a specialist.
So how do we go about fixing this issue?
In the video below I explain a few ways in order to fix the issues at hand.
Method 1: Cross calf roller
Position your calf and heel cord on a roller, cross your opposite leg over your shin to add pressure and then roll your leg from side to side. You can also contract and rfelaz, dorsiflexion/plantarflexion your toes.
Method 2: Get a friend to add pressure
Your buddy can grip the top of your partners shin and ankle, apply downward pressure, and then roll the leg back and forth over the roller.
Method 3: Barbell Roll
This offers more pressure at the acute level it can induce the most pain so if you’ve done the first two methods and they didnt pan out the way you wanted them to feel free to work at this method until it gets more mobile.
These are just a few of the ways to reduce calf tightness if you have any other ideas or comments please feel free to let me know!
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