Q&A: Coaching Mobility and Improving Ankle Function, Part 2
The Biomechanics of Improving Ankle Mobility
Recently, Max and I filmed a video where I walked him through some ankle mobility drills intended to improve alignment of the ankle bones making mobility work more effective. If you haven’t watched that video, you should start there. In this blog, I wanted to expand on the information provided in the video series for those drills to give you more context about why you would use them. The three drills that Max demoed are based on gait mechanics and how moving joints into specific positions can allow people to access movements patterns. Regarding the question of how to improve ankle mobility, I often see a lack of understanding of how leveraging joint mechanics and position can be the gateway to layering in strength and loaded stretching to actually improve mobility. Between the foot and the tibia and fibula, there are 28 bones. If those bones only know a specific shape, they can only ever experience strength and stress in that position. So the goal of these exercises are to get the bones moving, let the muscles go through their contraction cycle, and achieve better positions.
To improve dorsiflexion, you need pronation of the foot and internal rotation of the tibia. Other things do happen upstream at the knee and hip, but I will try to keep this as local as needed. Pronation is a splaying of the foot, or a dropping of the arch closer to the floor. This is not to be confused with eversion, which is a loss of the lateral border of the foot. I believe most people think of eversion when they hear pronation, or a flat foot. During pronation the foot is still active through its three points across its foundation, which is the heel, big toe knuckle, and little toe knuckle.
The Drills
Purpose: This is to teach the foot how to move from supination to pronation as the center of mass travels forward.
Execution: Start with shin behind the heel, let the knee bend and move forward as your body follows the knee. Stop when you get to the middle of your foot.
Common errors: Trying to complete a rep too quickly or leading with your chest.
Purpose: To move from supination to pronation under load and achieve max dorsiflexion.
Execution: Start with the shin behind the heel, let the knee bend and move your body forward. There needs to be a forward and downward motion. Constantly search for weight on your heel as you let the shin drop forward.
Common errors: Trying to get into a maximal knee over toe position (losing the heel) or rushing the rep.
Purpose: Actively use pronation and tibial IR to help load into dorsiflexion.
Execution: Find your foundation, knee over the middle of your foot, be relaxed and descend down. Relax your toes so you’re not gripping the ground. Push through the floor as you ascend.
Common errors: Losing foot foundation, center of mass too far forward (chest parallel to floor), or rushing the rep.
The above three drills are not the only drills that can achieve improvements in joint position for the foot. Different presentations will require different exercises. This is where the assessment process that Max laid out from Part 1 comes into play. The goal of exercises like this are to give access to joint positions so someone can actually load them in a meaningful way. Imagine someone who has always performed a squat where their chest is excessively leaned forward. They may perceive this as a limitation in ankle mobility, which could be true. However, they could also lack the ability to shift their weight backwards and have now grooved a motor pattern that biases supination and loading their calves to stop themselves from falling forward. For this person, you would need to teach them how to actually shift the center of mass over their center of gravity and them experience pronation so they can achieve a better looking squat.
I tried to keep this information relatively basic as its principles are rooted in biomechanics, gait mechanics, motor learning, and coordination. There are a plethora of sources you can learn from like David Grey, Gary Ward, and Bill Hartman, among many others. It is easy to over-complicate things while walking down this rabbit hole. I do believe there is a middle ground that has to be struck between biomechanics and strength training. You need to use biomechanics principles to guide your exercise selection, as well as using the information gained from your assessment to help understand the client and their goals to then create change.
