This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, in this video we're doing static release
techniques for the calf, or foam rolling, self myofascial release, you've
probably heard those terms before. Now, the calves tend to get bound down in lower
leg dysfunction. The common thing that we see in lower leg dysfunction is a
combination of eversion, that's the feet flatten out, and external rotation,
which is the feet turnout, and the inability to dorsiflex. So the
plantar flexors are tight, restricting our ability to dorsiflex.
I'm going to have my friend, Laura, come out and help me demonstrate this exercise. Now,
because we know what this lower leg dysfunction generally looks like, we
can't kind of predict where our trigger points are going to be. So, the lateral
gastroc here, does all three of the joint actions that I talked about before. It
resists dorsiflexion as a planter flexor, it will cause some external rotation of
the tibia, and it will evert my foot. So we expect to see a lot of trigger points in
this upper lateral portion of the calf, or the lateral head, the outside
head of this two-headed muscle here, being your gastroc. The other place
we commonly see trigger points is your soleus. Now, this gets a little
complicated, but your soleus will definitely resist plantar flexion, it can
also do some external rotation of the tibia, as well as some eversion because
of where the Achilles tendon attaches on the calcaneus. The most common places to
find trigger points for the soleus are going to be here, right
kind of in between the bottom of those two gastroc heads, which happens to be the
middle of the belly of the soleus, as well as up here, which I know that's
underneath the gastroc, or it kind of looks like I'm pointing at the gastroc,
but the trigger point you guys will feel is way up in the corner here, right where
the gastroc even starts to thin out a little bit. So I'm going to have Laura go ahead
and sit down. I'm using a softball here, you can use a
foam roll, that's fine, I'll kind of explain that here in a second. She's
going to find the most tender point in her calf, which generally for Laura is
right exactly where I talked about those points being. It's either right here in
the middle of the head of her soleus, or right here on her lateral gastroc in
the middle of that belly. Kind of just getting back to the foam roll versus
the softball, I do find that as tendinous as the calf is, there's a lot of connective
tissue, that a foam roll might not be enough pressure per square inch. At the
end of the day all static release techniques are a matter of squishing
muscles. We're just taking something hard and squishing the muscle between that
object and bone. So by using a soft ball I'm reducing the amount of surface area,
increasing the pressure per square inch. This has a huge advantage, I've seen
people use the foam roll and then lift their butt up to try to get enough pressure, but
chances are we're going to have to hold this position statically on a trigger
point for 30 seconds to 2 minutes before we're going to feel a release, and
it's that release that we're looking for to get us an increase in extensibility
to get that trigger point to calm down. So Laura's using a softball here. If she
wanted to progress even further she could actually put this leg on top of it,
and then she's just going to hold, and you can see her face, 'yeah I feel that'. She's just
going to hold that position until that trigger point goes away. Once again,
it's going to take 30 seconds to 2 minutes for that to happen, you should
feel a significant amount of discomfort reduce. Don't roll back and forth.
I see that a lot, I see a lot of people roll over this
spot over and over again. The thing that you're probably most likely to do in
that scenario is start stimulating your pain receptors, which could make your
trigger point worse. I hope you enjoy the video, I
hope you enjoy this technique, great for anybody with lower leg dysfunction.
Once again, this was static release for your gastroc and soleus complex. Talk to
you guys soon.