What is the Ankle?

We all probably have a love-hate relationship with our ankles. Maybe you don’t love your ankles because you don’t appreciate them enough. They click and clack. You sprained your left one during baseball in high school and it hasn’t felt the same since. You wear a brace now at your rec league basketball games. And just last week you started getting shin splints. Needless to say, they can be a menace. Despite all this nonsense, they also do a lot of good things.

The ankle itself is not that complicated of a body part. It consists of three bones. First, you have your tibia and fibula. Then, you have your talus. This is a foot bone at the top of your foot. You may have never heard of the talus because the next bone below it, the calcaneus, gets all of the attention. The calcaneus is super important and we will talk about it. However, it is not the ankle joint that we are discussing. The calcaneus is where some of the ankle muscle tendons attach.

You’re probably wondering, why isn’t the calcaneus a part of the ankle joint? A joint is a junction of bones. The talocrural, or ankle joint, does not include the calcaneus (which is commonly referred to as the ‘heel bone’).

Okay, cool. But, what about the muscles? Today, we are only going to talk about the muscles on the back of the leg. These are the ones that people refer to as ‘calf muscles’ and are what most guys who go to the gym skip on leg day. These two muscles are the gastrocnemius and the soleus. If you can’t pronounce the first one, that’s okay. You are like 92% of the world’s English-speaking population. So, from now on, we will just refer to it as the gastroc (which is common gym-nerd speak).

These two muscles mainly point the foot downward, or ‘plantarflex’ the foot. If you’ve ever heard of ‘plantar fasciitis,’ that might help you remember that the bottom of the foot is also called the ‘plantar’ side.. And no, it’s not ‘planter’s fasciitis.”

How Does Immobility at the Ankle Happen?

You might not know this, but ankle mobility is a thing. You might spend all day stretching out your hamstrings and your butt-cheek muscles to try to get deeper in a squat and you can never quite get ass-to-grass. Even though you might not be wasting your time, you haven't learned how important ankle mobility is to your squat mechanics. But no fear, I have a couple of ways that you can rule out ankle mobility as a problem.

Let’s talk first about how this happens and what this might mean for you if you do in fact have immobile ankles. Most immobility comes from one of three things: overuse, hanging out in shortened positions for too long (i.e. sitting with your knees bent and having tight hamstrings), or a combination of those two. In the case of the calf muscles, that gastroc and soleus we mentioned, it is more a case of overuse.

Sometimes in life, we slouch and stand with not so great posture. This poor posture is not just happening at your shoulders, it is also happening at your hips. Poor hip and lower spine posture is caused by a whole bunch of things, like anterior pelvic tilt. This laxity when it comes to our hip posture can cause our quad, glute (butt-cheek), hamstring, and other muscles to not be able to hold our knee straight.

This is also called knee extension and it is not just the role of the quad muscles. It is the role of a whole bunch of things, and the calves are one of them. Now, the gastroc, because it is a muscle that crosses the knee, can have a pretty direct role in this knee straightening job. However, the soleus, which doesn’t cross the knee, can also fulfill this role. We mentioned how these two muscles point the toe down. When the foot is planted, this pointing down of the toe into the ground can also help extend the knee.

That is how we tend to overuse the soleus, the main culprit of ankle immobility (or at least one type of it). Extending the knee through plantarflexion is like mixing cake batter with a spork. It’s trying it’s darndest to do a job of 5 men and women who are all bigger and stronger than it and also more talented at the job. This all happens when you have poor posture, and a possible and likely reason you have crappy ankles. You sitting down all day isn’t helping either. (I’m sorry, it might seem like I’m picking on you, but my ankles are crappy too. I’m probably being so mean because I, myself, am quite self-conscious of my ankle issues and am projecting my insecurity on you.)

How Do I Test for Immobility?

I’ve told you what might happen if you were to have tight ankles and why you might have tight ankles. But, how do you know if your ankle mobility is actually an issue? It's not all that hard. All you need is a wall and your human self. Oh, and a ruler or measuring device that uses the outdated empirical scale.

Position your measuring device on the wall so that it is counting towards you. Then, position your foot next to the measuring device 5 inches from the wall. Get down on one knee (the opposite side of the foot that is 5 inches from the wall) so that you are in a lunge position. Now, bring your front knee towards the wall.

Can you touch your knee to the wall without your heel coming off of the ground? Great, you’re a mobility superstar.

Oh, wait. Your knee also must track outside of your big toe. Does it fall inward? That’s a fail, my friend.

Make sure to try this on both sides! You might be surprised by the lack of symmetry.

How Do I Improve my Immobility?

Sometimes I get annoyed that you all don’t just let me point out your flaws and leave you with them. Instead, my ‘job’ is to ‘help you move better,’ ‘become healthier,’ or ‘train you.’ All of this I find ridiculous. But, I’ve put on my charitable cap and will tell you some ways of getting to that sweet sweet 5 inches (I didn’t mean that to be any sort of innuendo).

One, is the old trusty foam roller. Below, is a video of me rolling the foam on my calf muscles. Foam rolling improves tissue quality in a number of ways. If you have time before your warmup, it can be a great way of restoring tissue length and increasing blood flow to tissues before a workout. As you can see, I’m pointing my foot up and down and turning my toe in and out. This is to identify areas of tenderness that I will spend more time on. More pressure is better than less when it comes to foam rolling.

Speaking of more pressure, use a ball to get a more pinpoint approach to foam rolling. The smaller the object used to mobilize tissue, the more pressure. The more pressure, the better.

Also, you can turn to trusty ole’ stretching. In particular, static stretching of the soleus can really help increase ankle mobility for the squat if performed after exercise. However, don’t leave out the gastroc from your routine.

Here, I am doing two variations of calf stretches. One, the straight knee calf stretch is for the gastroc. The bent knee calf stretch is for the soleus. Hold each for at least a minute after your workout for some mobility gainz.

What’s the best way to improve your ankle mobility for the long-term? Move well, move often, and fix your posture. If everyone only did those things all of the time, blogs like this wouldn’t exist!

References

Sahrmann, S. (2008). Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes. St. Louis, MO: Mosby.

Horschig, A. (2017, June 30). How to Screen Ankle Mobility. Retrieved May 25, 2020, from https://squatuniversity.com/2015/11/05/the-squat-fix-ankle-mobility-pt-1/

Neumann, D. A., Kelly, E. R., Kiefer, C. L., Martens, K., & Grosz, C. M. (2017). Kinesiology of the musculoskeletal system: Foundations for rehabilitation. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

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