in today's video we're going to talk about how to stretch the calves the
right way and the big mistake to avoid injury and decrease performance
what's up it's Coach E here from precision movement and welcome to another video
here on YouTube so today we're gonna talk about how to stretch your calves
the right way so the calves often tighten up because there's so much so
you so relied on when you're running when you're doing any kind of agility or
power speed sports martial arts boxing skipping all that kind of stuff really
works the calves a lot and they tend to tighten up in a lot of people and the
natural reaction is to stretch them out okay so there's a couple stretches that
most people do one is the foot up on the wall or I got a box here and you're just
gonna reef into it like this and you're gonna stretch out the calves, the
other one would be hanging off the edge of a box or a bench and stretching them
that way both of the same thing they're lengthening the calves by going into
ankle dorsiflexion okay so one thing you've got to understand is the calves
are two distinct groups of muscles there's the gastrocnemius and there's
the soleus the gastrocnemius is a two joint muscle okay so it goes right into
the Achilles tendon and inserts into the Achilles tendon here and goes right up
to behind the knee and it does help to contribute to knee flexion okay along
with the hamstrings it's part of the posterior chain so you've got to
understand to stretch the calves the knee or at least the gastrocnemius, to
stretch your gastrocnemius, the knee has to be fully extended okay so we've got
to extend the joint there so it's on full fully lengthened from the knee and
then go into dorsiflexion so you're fully lengthened at the ankle that's how
you're gonna get that full range okay but the thing we've got to consider when
it especially when it comes to the calves is what their function is and
what happens when you do traditional static stretch so the calves they're a
fast twitch muscle they're built to help you with speed
and explosiveness and power gather tend to be type 2 muscle fibers so they're
fast which when we statically stretch any muscles it tends to decrease their
reaction time decrease their ability to generate power
so we're impacting we're impairing the exact functions that the calves serve in
our body for movements okay so that's any static stretching 30 seconds and
above that's what will happen okay so we want to avoid that we don't want to
impair performance and the other thing is it also can contribute if you're
doing it right before exercise it can increase the injury risk the muscle
strain risk of the groups that you do static stretching force so we don't want
to do that okay so what do you do instead so first of all for the gastrocnemius
like I said before you got to keep your knees locked out if your knees are
bent you're not going to be stretching the gastrocnemius at all you're not getting
to full range fully lengthened range you will be stretching the soleus but not
the gastroc ok, so knees got to stay locked out the whole time what I
recommend for stretching the calves is just doing full range slowly centrics
with a two second pause at the end and then coming right up two second pause at
the end you do that five to ten reps keeping the knees extended the whole
time and that's going to be the safest and the most functional stretch for your
calf muscles okay so you do that up now eccentrics have proven to be a little
bit more beneficial for gaining that range the other thing that you want to
implement with calf stretching is look to the function it's for fast-twitch
it's for bounce like martial arts boxing quick movements okay so we want to make
sure that if especially for doing this before exercise but I would even do this
anytime we're doing stretches is to implement some of the
ballistic explosive type movements into the calf stretch okay so we're getting
down here you could do the same thing and coming down and then right up so you
get that little stretch shortening cycle going so it's a fast contraction fast
transition from eccentric to concentric and that's how you're going to retain
the springiness that the calves are supposed to give you they're supposed to
give you that little bit of pop that you get when you run when you sprint or when
you jump okay so do that for six to ten reps at the end of your slow ascent
tricks with two second pause at the end and that's going to be the best way to
stretch your calves for both safety and for performance reasons okay so that
wraps up another video here thanks for watching
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