♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together we are the most famous physical therapist
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna show you
if you're ankle is tight, question mark,
how and why are you gonna increase the mobility.
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All right, so why do you want to increase ankle mobility?
Well, there's a lot of reasons.
One, when you want to bend over and pick something up,
like when do you want to do a squat,
if you don't have the ankle motion,
you're actually gonna go forward like this,
and may push you back, - Right.
- [Bob] 'cause you don't have the mobility.
- The mechanics of it, because you're heel lifts up
and you're on ball of your foot.
- We're really talking about mobility,
especially this way. - Right.
- [Both] Dorsiflexion.
- Yep. - Yep, going upwards.
- Lunges, again, difficult to do
unless you have ankle mobility.
Yep. - Yep. So, yeah.
'Cause when you're just on the ball of your foot,
your balance is quite a bit more challenged.
- And the next one is balance.
Especially if you were a person that wore high heels
all your life and the cord has shortened up in the back,
- The Achilles tendon. - Achilles tendon,
it's gonna want to push you back almost.
- Sure.
- So with walking, running...
We just found out when my daughter,
she was having foot pain for years,
and I finally discovered
that her calf muscle was really tight.
She stretched her calf muscle and she massages it.
And lo and behold, her pain went away.
- Did she get mad at you
and say, "Why didn't you tell me that a decade ago?"
- No, she was happy but I was a little mad at myself,
because I'm like, "How long did I let her deal with this?"
So as a general rule of thumb,
you want to, first off, see
if your calf is tight,
- Sure. - your ankle is tight.
- And there's an easy way to do it.
You don't need equipment or really anything.
- Do you want to go over
and show it, Brad? - Yes.
Can you come over this way, Tanner?
- You can take that band out of their, Brad.
- Oh, yeah.
We're going to look at the floor. I've got some tape here.
You just need to measure from the wall.
I've got five inches to the edge of this tape here.
This is a two-inch wide tape.
That are gonna go...
Use a five inch and a six inch,
and you don't have to be precise.
- Right.
So for most people,
they should be able to at least put their foot
five inches away from the wall.
So the toll. - Yep, the toll.
- And keep your foot flat,
your heel- - Yep, and straight forward.
- Yep, glued to the floor. Straightforward.
Not like this. - Don't turn the foot out.
- Right. - That's easier.
- And then keep your knee over your toes
and see if you can touch...
- Look at that. - Oh, I'm a little tight.
- Brad's coming up a little bit.
- Yep, I'm tight.
Is there like a modification
for when you're getting closer to 60, where you can...
- Quit crying. Quit crying. - There we go!
I better start stretching a little more, obviously.
- Okay, let's see the other one.
Let's see how that one does.
- It is nice to compare right to left.
And yeah, I could get...
- Tight up on both sides. - Yeah, still a little tight.
Little bit better on the right.
- [Bob] Let me try this.
- All right. Yeah, let him try.
- I got barefoot so it's just gonna be harder,
'cause I don't have a heel. - Yep.
- Look at that.
- Are you touching? - Yes!
- But you've been stretching and working with yours.
- Yeah, I have been doing this for a long time.
- Yes.
- Now, the other day, I did this and-
- Well, you're cheating there.
Your toe is past the line. - (chuckles) Okay.
One of them did come up a little bit.
I think it was this one.
- So we're looking right here.
Does that comes up?
- And for an athlete, if you're a younger athlete,
I like to see almost be six inches away.
- Yeah, so from the wall to there.
- And now you can see
I am coming up a little bit on that one.
- This is a really nice way for the layperson
to get a good functional measurement
on your ankle range of motion. - Yeah, I'm coming up, too,
a little bit. - Wow.
- So, all right, the first stretch we're gonna do...
This was an advanced one.
You can try these other ones first if you want to,
that aren't advanced,
but this is a one that'll help a lot.
So if you look at foot bottle, foot and lower leg,
we got the tibia and we have the talus,
and that forms a mortar and joint.
What are the...
Tendon and joint?
- [Brad] I don't know.
I was thinking about something else, Bob.
You're not gonna want to... (laughs)
The ankle joint right there.
We got it drawn out on your foot.
- [Bob] So what we're gonna want this bone,
this tibia actually slides and rolls over the talus.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So we're gonna hold this talus in place
while you're trying to move that tibia forward.
- [Brad] Right.
So it's a way to get real specific
on where the stretch happens.
- [Bob] So here's my tibia bone. That's the bottom of it.
Outlined there. - In blue.
- [Bob] Yep. And right below it is the talus bone.
So I'm gonna hold the talus bone with a band.
- Yes. - And now I rotate
or move the leg actually forward over it.
- [Brad] I don't think people care about the tal...
They just want to see the exercise, Bob.
- Sure. So you would need a band.
We got the Bob and Brad loops here,
but you could use any band
that's thick enough and heavy enough.
- Right. And it is nice to have the stretch of heavy one.
A little give is good
as opposed to like a leather strap,
or you could do that too if you had a more rigid strap.
- Yeah. I suppose a belt could work.
But you guys have some way to attach it there,
and then you will need a stool
or some type of chair or something.
- There's a fair amount of force.
So if you go around like the leg of a table or furniture,
it's probably gonna slide forward.
So it has to be something more very stable and rigid.
- All right, so I'm gonna come up here.
- So I'm gonna do this just to make it a little faster.
So we're gonna put it
underneath that joint line. - Right.
- It's gonna go underneath your ankle bones,
the medial malleolus, lateral and medial malleolus.
- [Bob] And while you're in this position,
that's gonna pull it back.
The talus back or stabilized talus.
- [Brad] Sure.
- [Bob] And I'm gonna work on bending it forward
further and further and give it a good stretch.
- [Brad] And you'll feel the difference
between stretching it like this
versus, like, if you're doing a wall stretch.
You got that to support. - Right.
Again, this is an advanced one.
This is for people who are really serious
about getting this motion back
and they're better at squatting or whatever.
It's just a great one to do.
All right, the next one you can do is that...
Anybody could do these.
You could use a foam roller on your calf muscle
because your calf muscle could be tight.
- [Brad] That's right, Bob.
- Now, if you don't have a foam roller,
I just saw this where...
This is a pretty aggressive one, Brad,
but actually take a big PVC pipe.
- Oh, sure.
- Like a five-inch or six-inch PVC pipe.
- Yeah.
- And buy it from like a big-box store.
- If you got to buy 10-feet of it, though...
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Unless you're doing some plumbing anyways.
- Yeah. You want to buy just a foot length, probably.
- Yeah.
Or, you know, maybe, you know somebody that has them.
Otherwise, but typically one of these foam rollers like this
really works well.
- Look what Brad's doing here.
He's actually lifting his butt up
and putting a little...
I'm sorry, I just burped.
That leg over the top of that leg.
- So I like to actually get right down
on that Achilles tendon as well and work that,
and then get up into that muscle over the gastroc.
- The other thing I would suggest, Brad,
is you can actually dorsiflex
and plantarflex the ankle while you're on the foam roller.
Yup.
- So I'm doing this motion so we get that...
- You're getting the entire muscle.
If there's any adhesions, you're helping work that.
You can also turn the foot like...
Yep, turn it that way and work it,
and turn it inside. - Whoa!
Bob, I'm getting a tricep cramp on here.
- Oh my God. - Yeah.
I've been working my triceps at home.
It could be an aggressive one. - Oh, that makes sense.
That makes sense. - Yeah.
- Yep, he is turning it that way.
- Good.
- Now, I suppose you could use a coffee can, maybe two.
- Let's not. You get coffee, it'll open up coffee...
And a lot of the coffee cans are now plastic.
- Yeah. That's right.
They don't have the old Folgers can that we used to have.
Now, probably the best way to do this
is to get a massage gun.
So let's grab a massage gun, Brad.
- You know, these are pretty popular.
A lot of people may already have them.
But you need to get the one that reciprocates
or moves back and forth this way.
This one has a soft head.
Most of them always come with a variety of heads.
Some are more aggressive.
This one's airfield. It's a softer one.
Bob's got- - This one's not even out yet.
- Oh, that's right. - It's gonna be soon.
This is a one for athletes.
- Yeah, for the real aggressive people.
- This one's really aggressive enough for most people.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I really like working around my Achilles tendon.
- I do this every morning.
- You do? - Yep, my calves.
- [Brad] Whether it needs it or not.
- [Bob] You could see it paid off.
- [Brad] Yeah. I'm a little tighter.
I don't do this every morning.
I use the inclined board.
Are we gonna talk about the inclined board?
- Oh yeah. You could do the inclined board.
I'm sorry, did we mention that?
I was gonna show- - Really that's my favorite.
- I was trying to show things,
some things that are less common.
- Sure.
- And one was the use of a ball, Brad,
where you actually just get in that position
and hang out in there.
- I mean, we're not gonna show
the plain Jane go-to-wall stretch?
- Yeah. We can show that, too.
- [Brad] Just like this.
- Yep, and you can do it with the leg straight
and you can do with the leg bent.
- [Brad] Yep.
You're gonna want to hold these-
- Try to keep the heel on the ground while you're doing it.
- Not like this, but...
And you just bring your foot farther away.
You know, you could actually do the same stretch
that you do for the test. - Yep.
- And you're gonna get a stretch.
The nice thing about this is
you get body weight working in your favor.
- Well, also what I like about it, Brad,
it's even if you normally can't squat...
- Booyah stick, please.
- If you can't squat all the way down,
- Yeah.
- you gonna closer when you have a ball on the wall,
because it takes away the cap.
Yeah, see. Look Brad can go all the way down.
Can you get all the way down, Brad, without the ball?
- I think so.
It's not something I do every day.
Unless I'm...
- Oh, well, look at his heels.
- Yep. - They're coming up.
- I mean, when I have a ball,
I can lean back comfortably. - Right. Exactly.
- And this is one of those things
where I'm gonna move my foot in a little bit more
and emphasize one ankle at a time
- Yeah, exactly. - is the better way to do it.
- And you can hang out there.
You can sit down and go for a minute or two.
- Now in my case, this is gonna bother my knee after awhile.
That's one reason...
- So I wouldn't do it for any length time.
- Right. And I could tell.
And that's been going on since I was 22
and a half. - Sure.
Which was 175 years ago. - Yeah.
I do want to, you know...
Can I mention this, Bob? - Sure.
- I really like the inclined board
because you don't have to go through any...
It gets relatively aggressive,
not as much as the ones we talked about.
But I just have one that I just do this
when I do my other stretching.
when I'm rested... - I use that too.
- [Brad] And you can buy these. You can make them.
We've got a video how to make a...
- One out of wood. - Yeah, inversion.
- Well, they come in foam. - They do.
They're all over the place.
- You could find 50 among the internet.
- Yeah. Absolutely.
- All right. Really important to get those ankles moving.
You'll find out you're just gonna be a lot more stable
when you got to lift things,
and it'll be easier...
If a movement's not coming from your ankle,
it's gonna come from somewhere else and often to your back.
So you just so keep your back in better position.
- It's great if you're a hiker.
It makes a big difference when you got uneven terrain.
All right, Bob, we can fix just about anything
except for... - Except for a broken heart.
- That's right.
But this has got nothing to do with this.
- We're on unlucky 13 minutes here.
- Holy cow. We better cut it right now then.
(upbeat tone)