Hi, and welcome to The Running Channel. I'm Manni
and today I've got a follow along calf workout you can do at home,
no special equipment required.
This will help get you nice and strong in your calves,
as well as helping with loading and conditioning for your Achilles, ankles
and feet.
All of which is great for your running and will help you to push the pace
through your training sessions. It's important to mention though,
this is not a treatment for a specific injury,
and if you are suffering with pain or injury,
please seek in-person medical advice. We'll get stuck in in a sec,
but first please subscribe to The Running Channel and tap the bell icon to be
notified when we upload new videos all about running.
So for this series,
we're going to need a chair or jumper folded to perform these exercises.
So, with your folded jumper, what we're going to do is we're going to use this so you can identify
where your end of range movement is. When I prescribe
calf raises and help people try and build their calf strength,
I always identify that they can't get to their end range.
So we are going to start there in this episode.
With your folded towel and your chair,
all are you going to do, place the towel onto the floor.
Your heels are going to be on the towel or jumper.
Okay. From here, what I'd like you to do, you're going to push,
lift up,
And we're trying to get to that end point to the top position and really squeeze
those calf muscles. We'd like to do 12 of these.
So that was our first repetition.
Two.
In terms of speed, nice and controlled.
Can we hold at the top for one to two seconds?
So you should feel your calf muscles really kind of warm up
and you should feel them contract, okay?
The key thing here, try and keep your heels parallel.
Make sure they don't roll in or out.
Really well done.
Really well done guys. Hope that felt okay for you.
When we do our calf raises without anything underneath our toes,
we can sometimes not contract a muscle in the inside of our calf.
It's called your tibialis posterior.
So to try and increase the contraction of that muscle,
we can put our toes back onto a jumper or towel
that will help try and build that muscle.
That muscle is really important for controlling our pronation and foot.
So, first repetition,
nice and controlled up to the top. And slowly back down.
If your feet start to slide off slightly,
just make sure to bring them back onto the towel or jumper.
Try and ensure that you go in a vertical direction,
rather than too far forward.
So my feet are sliding off slightly. So I'll bring my toes back on.
Well done, guys. Keep going.
Nice and controlled. Remember to get to that end range position.
Woo.
Really well done guys. My calf muscles are really working.
I hope yours are at home too. Okay.
So what you've noticed from those exercises,
they're on two legs, but when we run, it's predominantly a unilateral sport.
So we're running on one leg
so we need strengthen each leg unilaterally.
So, we're going to use our chair. This time
we're going to turn the chair around.
We won't need our towel or jumper.
And what we want to do, place our foot on the chair.
We're going to do eight on each side total.
So, really key, as I said before,
try and move in a vertical direction and not forward.
That's our first repetition.
Two.
Really nice - halfway.
Last one.
Really good, guys. Switch sides.
You might sometimes find one side's easier than the other. That's okay.
Just focus, take your time if it's harder.
Good.
So I'm having to really focus on this side. Definitely finding it slightly harder.
Last two.
Good.
Well done.
Sometimes you might feel a bit of a contraction in your glutes. If you do,
that's normal and that's okay.
So with these first three exercises,
what we focused on really is the outside gastrocnemius.
It's kind of outside calf muscles,
and we have one on the inside and one on the outside.
Next in our series, we are going to strengthen our calf muscles with our
knees bent. This strengthens your soleus muscle. Your soleus muscle is really,
really important.
It has some of the strongest force that it can generate for such a small
muscle. And research has shown it's really integral in runners,
but sometimes we don't do these calf raises,
okay. But, today's your lucky day. We're going to do them today.
We're going to use a chair again.
Turn our chair in the opposite direction. Stand behind it
so we have that for support. We're going to do it on both legs.
Going back to bilateral, okay.
You're going to bend your knees.
Raise your heels.
The key here:
try not to use your knees, okay.
Keep those knees fixed. Just raising the heels.
Really well done guys. Keep going.
Woo! Well done guys.
So soleus work done. Perfect.
Last but not least, we're going to go for seated calf raises. So.
Use the chair
to work our soleus muscles.
The key thing is we want to have a nice 90 degree angle foot underneath our
knees. Okay.
Extend our-
Extend one of our legs
so it's up in the air, and all we're going to do is lift the heel,
nice and gently,
and back down. I'm going to go for five on each side. Ready?
Try and keep those heels parallel. Two.
Last one.
Nice work. Switch sides, guys.
Five!
This has been the calf follow along workout.
If any of those repetitions felt easy, maybe add some more. If they felt hard,
definitely take some away.
Try and do this once or twice in your week and some of the time
after your runs. Thanks so much for following along with that guys.
Any other workouts or follow alongs that you want to see, do let us know in the
comments below, and we will see you next time on The Running Channel.