Last month, we discussed the importance of stretching hamstrings. Another form of flexibility is joint flexibility. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments all go into action when we move a joint. Injury to these joints can obviously affect our range of motion.
We all know someone who had a knee replacement or rotator cuff surgery. Both surgeries require an enormous amount of PT sessions to get the patient back to their life. Shoulder, hip, and knee joint flexibility are vital and crucial to mobility. As we age, when we lose mobility in our joints due to pain, injury, surgery, or inactivity (yes, sitting is the new smoking), our lives are hugely altered.
I am going to share a few tips on one of the overlooked joints, the ankle. We do not even think about that sucker until we break it, sprain it, twist it, or trip. Because I am old, was a dance teacher for over 40 years, and have watched two of my children learn to walk again due to injury, I have spent lots of time thinking about and working on something called dorsiflexion and plantarflexion.
Simply, for my dancers out there, it is flexing and pointing your foot. For everyone else, it is pulling the toes toward the shin (dorsiflexion) and pointing the toes toward the ground (plantarflexion). It seems like a remarkably simple concept, but as we age, we lose a ton of flexibility and mobility in this joint.
When we do, we may find ourselves tripping and falling more, shuffling, or slapping our feet down when we walk rather than walking heel to toe. We may even experience numbness, tingling, and loss of balance. Is there something we can do to help our ankle joint? Absolutely:
1. Seated with your legs straight out in front of you, pull your toes back toward your shins as far as you can. Again, like the hamstring, go to where you feel tension and hold. If you feel like you cannot do enough on your own, take a towel under the balls of your feet, and pull the ends back with your hands holding the ends of the towel. Find that sweet spot where you feel some tension, but you are not in pain! Hold and inhale/exhale for 15 seconds. You can repeat 2 more times.
2. Now, reverse it and point your toes toward the ground. Same inhale/exhale. You may like to keep the towel under the balls of the feet and apply a little resistance: pressing the towel down with your feet while holding on to the ends of the towel.
3. Finally, alternate between the two positions: Inhale for 4 as you pull the toes back (dorsiflexion) and exhale as your point the toes (plantarflexion). You can do ten sets of flexing and pointing the foot.
4. Placing yourself in front of a wall with both hands on the wall, put your right toes up the wall with your right heel staying on the ground as you stand on your left leg. Hold and inhale/exhale for 15-30 seconds. Repeat on other side. As those hamstrings become more flexible because you have been doing such a bang-up job freeing up those muscles with your hamstring stretches, you may be able to drop to your forearms on the wall. Initially, you may barely be able to place your toes up the wall, let alone the ball of your foot. Be patient and stay consistent. Believe me, it WILL become easier.
Happy Walking! Increasing dorsiflexion will help plantar fasciitis from which so many people suffer. Keeping the ankle joint flexible, strengthening the calf muscles (that’s for next month), and increasing that range of motion can all help ease that fascia (that tissue connecting heel bone to toes down the arch of the foot).
