3 Next Level Mobility Hacks for Knee & Ankle Pain
Maintenance on our calf muscles as well as all of their surrounding tissues and overall biomechanical system, is critically important to maintaining and improving athletic performance as well as mitigating injury.
Since Dahmer is trending as a top show on Netflix right now, it seems appropriate to note that if we were to eat a human calf, it would be a grisly, chewy, nasty, meal.
Cringey to think about in that respect, yet so true because the calf muscle undergoes an extreme number of loading cycles during an average day. The typical active human takes 10,000 steps daily, and the average athlete will take many more than that, usually under more intense conditions of force output like jumping, cutting, and sprinting.
That said, maintenance on our calf muscles as well as all of their surrounding tissues and overall biomechanical system, is critically important to maintaining and improving athletic performance as well as mitigating injury.
Scar Balls
The biggest issue with mobility I see as a coach is that most of us neglect it, possibly because we don’t know how to utilize these tools effectively or we’re just being lazy bums. Hence the purpose of this post, may it help you heal any pre-existing naggy injury, or prevent disaster from striking all together.
As the master of mobilization techniques, Dr. Kelly Starrett, says in his book Becoming a Supple Leopard:
“Your calves are prone to sliding surface restrictions. Left untreated that stiffness aggregates into intramuscular adhesions and knotted up scar balls that compromise mechanics and increase potential for injury.”
Scar balls doesn’t sound particularly comfortable and this becomes very evident when employing the following mobilization techniques to optimize performance and save your unedible lower legs from injury.
Key note: if you don’t use these, or other, mobility hacks on a regular basis, they will give you little benefit. It’s kind of like when your dentist sternly eyes you over the brims of their glasses after you tell them you’ve only been flossing your teeth once or twice a week. As the saying goes, “Floss the teeth you want to keep!” which becomes a good way to think about mobility as well, do it often or else.
Mobility Hack #1: Anterior Tib Smash
Your first few times doing this particular mobilization, you may want to throw the lacrosse ball through the wall or be tempted to only smash your tib for a few seconds, but I promise if you hang out on there for at least a minute, it will get noticeably better, especially if you can apply this prescription a few times a week and not just a few times a year.
This mobilization is a great way to prevent or reduce ankle and knee pain.
Perform for at least 2 minutes on each side.
Mobility Hack #2: Calf Bone Saw
Drape your ankle over a foam roller and then cross your opposite leg over the top of your ankle. Use your top leg to saw back and forth across the leg on the foam roller to really dig into your heel cord, soleus, and gastrocnemius.
Perform this mobilization for at least 10 seconds of sawing in 5 different spots up the length of your calf starting at your heel cord and ending at the biggest part of your gastrocnemius.
Mobility Hack #3: Elevated Banded Ankle Distraction
This is a far better way to improve flexibility of the calf and range of motion in the ankle than old school stretching against a wall because it’s actually quite difficult to elicit change in the tissues when just hanging out in a static position. In Becoming a Supple Leopard, Dr. Starrett compares this to hanging onto a piece of steel cable hoping it will stretch.
The second reason, is that this particular mobilization targets more than the muscle. It is also addresses the ankle capsule and our fascia, or the connective tissue that encapsulates our muscles.
Fast forward to the end of the below video for the Elevated Banded Ankle Distraction.
Perform this mobilization for at least 15 to 20 repetitions on each side.