Which exercises would you recommend for stretching and creating ankle flexibility within swimmers?

Question

Erin Carson · Answer

Hi, Jude, I think doc Cunningham described quite well about how to assess ankle flexibility. What I'd like to add to. That might be a couple of exercises that would be good for swimmer's to interact with gravity and against gravity and more of a loaded standing position. And that would be to, he'll walk with their toes up and hold really strong, tall posture and then also be able to toe walk up on the toes and a plantar flexed position. Isshin, so that way you're working both dorsiflexion toes towards the front of the shin and also plantar flexion with pointed toes and you can strengthen the position, which then should translate for the athlete in the swimming to be able to achieve a more functional position of the foot and hopefully great, kicking and decreased times in their swimsuits.

Dr. Brian Cunningham · Answer

Dude, this is a great question. First of all, I want to thank Paul for referring this question to me. Let me step back a little bit and kind of explain how I would probably assess ankle. So you want to think about first of all, passive range of motion. Those The Joint passively go by itself. So what I mean by that is if you pull your ankle down, do you have this range of motion? Can you? Passively get there. So that could, if you can, it could be from a number of reasons because of a joint restriction or a soft tissue restriction. So then you could assess, if they have that motion, can they actively pointer foot down? And is there is restriction with that? If there's a restriction with that it can tell you possibly that there's something to do with strength. And then you want to look at a resistance. Can they actually get Through that and I'm thinking of obviously a swimmer. So, you were thinking, what we call open chain, which means your foot is not on the ground, but then you also want to think about closed chain where your foot is on the ground. So if I stand up a lot of people, you can look at strength where you're up on your tiptoes, so I am probably not great with this camera position. So up on your toes, can they be in that position and That's two legs. So maybe they want to go onto one leg and see if they can raise up after he'll. Okay, so that would be a quick kind of assessment but also way that you could actually treat. And so you also want to think about the foot the foot and the ankle is unique in the sense that we are weight-bearing, humans are athletes, right. We're on our ankles the whole time. So we're tend to be What I call it Dorsey Flex position. So that's this 9090 position for the walls. And since women, we want to be in this opposite position, which you want to think about the whole kinetic chain and how the position of your body above the ankle, can affect what's going on in front and in the back of the ankle. Okay, but also, you want to think about if you see those swimmers that are really flexible or hypermobile, they'll tend to just kind of flop. Up into this position. Okay. And so, that's a little bit of plantar, flexion, and inversion. And so you want to look at the tissue along the front and on the side and on the back. Okay, then also look at the planner for exposition of your feet. Can that tissue move? So some of the things that you can do is just lightly kind of massage and find out where to restrictions are and so that would be in a resting position and then you could also do it. You're actually trying to point your foot down and actually use your hands to mobilize the tissue to soft tissue in the direction that you want to go. Hopefully that will help, but sometimes you have to move it in different directions in order to help. So, in this case, I find a restriction more in the back that's preventing me from point to my toe down. So I'm actually pulling my hand up this way and pushing my hand down, probably a little bit more complicated. Than what you want to know. And other way that I find a lot of swimmers tend to do, they tend to go back onto their onto their heels or onto their toes and they sit down like this and then come up into this position. Okay, which puts a lot of strain and I've had actually had some athletes get injured by that so I don't recommend that straight off. What you want to do is to identify. If I the type of athlete that you're working with and so this is hard to give a generalization because a lot of swimmers tend to be hyper mobile.

Atiba Wade · Answer

For swimmers looking to increase ankle flexibility, mobility, and strength, I like doing this version of weighted tibial raises. It works overall mobility due to the dorsiflexion component for strength and the plantar flexion component for flexibility, which are essential factors while kicking. And as an added bonus, you can scale up this exercise to help improve your shoulder flexibility and mobility for your streamline.

Paul Talty · Answer

Why did you thanks for your question? Unfortunately, the more straightforward answers for you. As for two main reasons. The first one is when it comes to an ability or inability to move through a certain range of motion at a given joint. It's not always about the flexibility are about stretching that joint into that position to try and correct. Correct, the problem quite often. It's done, water, lack of strength of a lack of proprioception, or all the joint and therefore, an inability to Actually move into those positions. So it's not quite as simple as just identifying or two quick stretches for forgiving joint. The other main reason don't have a very straightforward answer for you, is that this probably isn't really my main area of expertise. There's another expert on the platform here. Called Brian Cunningham. He's good Irish guy. Who's been living in the states for a long time? Now, when he's in work with USA, swimming for the last 10 years, or thereabouts, And I would direct you towards him another resource that you could seek out if you if you wanted to is the prehab guys.com., That's the prehab guys.com. It's a resource that I often turn to for anyone looking to address things like this. They've got some excellent blogs in there. They'll be able to experience a bit more. What I'm made to do your ear in relation to and the need for flexibility versus the need for strength of proprioception training. They also submix Nurses around rehabbing and pre. Having certain joint complexes, like the ankle of the foot strike a bit more direct help, but hopefully, in the very least, sending in the right direction.

Jess Racz · Answer

So I work primarily with basketball and Lacrosse athletes. I'm a performance trainer and but so I know your question is directed towards swimmers, but I think a lot of this applies to any sport no matter what creating ankle flexibility and Mobility stretching, might help. But what happens when we just stretch is think of like a rubber band and so when we stretch that rubber band, like we're stretching the muscle and the ankle and the tendons in the ankle like once. We stretch that like a rubber bands. We let go of that rubber band, that rubber bands, just going to go right back to what it was and so people stretch all the time and they don't see a difference. So, what we need to do is actually create one. We need to look at pelvis orientation and understanding. If I have an anterior pelvic tilt or my or my pelvis is, if this is my pelvis is tilted forward. Think of like a gymnast they have like a lot of anterior pelvic tilt where their chest flares. Their hips are forward and they have this like curve and their lower back. That might not always show, but if I can change my pelvic orientation, what that's going to do is if I have an anterior pelvic tilt and everything's forward this way. That means my low back is tight. My hamstrings are tight, my calves and my ankles are tight. My achilles is tight. Think of someone also wearing like heals. Everything is shortened or everything's overly lengthened. So we want to make sure that we address our pelvic orientation. I would look up like pelvic orientation or pelvic anterior pelvic, tilt exercises to get back into that posterior tilt tilt that's going to help the ankle flexibility and then also loaded Mobility. So like whenever I do angle flexibility just making sure that I'm you know, holding a weight and I can do like front squats. I can do goblet squats, I can do. Squats. If you look all those up, that's like loaded mobility and that's going to help the ankle flexibility.

Hayley Hollander · Answer

Hi, Jude, which exercises would you recommend for stretching and creating ankle flexibility within swimmers? You know, this is a good question because I think it's important that we remind ourselves that the impact of water and the forces of water move, the foot and ankle in a variety of directions, beyond the plantar, flexion and the dorsiflexion that it must create in order to propel the body forward when it's kicking. So not only is it going this way, pretend my hand is My foot for example, but it's also kind of getting a little bit of variation for in the frontal plane in the little bit in the transverse plane because of the water. So yes, stretching and creating ankle flexibility within swimmers is really important. So let me show you what I would do. Okay, so I would stand in a staggered stance of one foot is in front of the other, the rear foot become the emphasis and this particular setting. It's my right foot mirroring in the camera. I might look like Is my last word I'm gonna drive that knee towards 12:00 at night and I'm standing on a clock. And what that's doing is is you can see from the side view is its increasing my dorsiflexion in the Foot and Ankle, I don't have much weight on this leg. The more on my rear foot and ankle, then beyond going to 12:00. I'm also going to go towards 11:00, imagine I'm standing on the clock and now not only am I getting door selection, but you can see that my arms, Distracting and getting some Crow Nation as well. And then I'm also going to go towards 1:00 with that knee and not only am I getting dorsiflexion but I'm getting supination. So I'm getting a frontal and transverse motion of the Foot and Ankle, I would do, you know, six to eight reps, in each Direction on both feet and then progress to more single leg standing toe touch with those three directions. Great question. Thank you.

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"Which exercises would you recommend for stretching and creating ankle flexibility within swimmers?"