♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet. ♪
- Howdy, folks, I'm Bob Schrup, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we're the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we're going to do some basic calf stretches.
- Woo!
- That's right.
- Not that kind of calf.
- So, you know, why do you need
to stretch your calf?
For one thing, it can really affect your feet
when you're walking, if they're tight.
Another reason is you, all of us,
have to squat at some point,
if we're going to pick stuff all off the floor,
and if you have trouble squatting,
quite often the restriction is in the calf, so.
- Which the ankle may (indistinct) motion.
- Right? Right.
- Which the calf is directly related.
- It's good that you explain that because
I just assume people know that,
but they probably don't.
- Yeah.
- So, we'll start off with, and this is
a good way to tell whether or not
you need to stretch.
You can actually take a yard stick,
Brad, do you want to show this?
- Yeah, so here we got a yard stick.
You don't have to have a yard stick,
but what you need is something.
This will be easy to show
five inches from the wall.
And then you put your-
- The front of your foot should be
five inches from the wall.
- So I got a five inch distance
from here to here.
Keep your heel flat on the floor,
and then you're going to bend forward
and see if you can touch your knee.
- Knee without lifting the heel,
and Brad is unable to do that right now.
- I'm a little tight, little tight coming up.
I'm going to see if my other foot is the same.
So it's nice to compare one to the other.
And I'm pretty-
- I'll say a little better, but still.
- It's close.
- So you want to do it before you stretch,
and then do it after again,
and see if you've made any gains.
And also over time-
- Right.
- Maybe after a couple of weeks.
So I'm going to go ahead and start,
and I'm going to show you the first stretch.
Now, the first stretch is,
I'm going to stretch this back leg right here.
So we're going to just stretch the gastroc soleus.
I'm leaning against the wall.
I'm keeping the knees straight.
- Right. So the gastroc soleus
is a muscle that comes up,
it gives you those two bumps right there.
- Well, actually the gastrocnemius.
- Oh, you're right, sorry.
Yeah, now keep- that the toe needs
to be pointed straight ahead.
If you rotate the foot outward,
can you show how not to do it, Bob?
- Not like that.
- Yeah, that will not be the-
That will not cut it.
- Yep.
- So, then you're also going
to want to stretch it
with a knee bent, because now you're focusing
on a different muscle in the calf
called the soleus.
- There you go.
- And I do feel that one is tighter.
- You'll feel the difference when you do that.
- Now last one you can actually do,
you can do this in a doorway too,
You can lean like this
and you'll get a little stretch
into the foot, too, also.
But just a different way to go at the calf.
And you can actually bring
the right leg through the doorway,
if you have a doorway.
- So you want to actually make sure
the toes extend like you've got,
you've got really flexible toes, Bob.
- I do.
- Wow.
- It's one thing I'm known for.
- Now, if you've got shoes
that have a really heavy sole,
that will restrict you a little bit,
but I think you could Still do it.
- That's fine too.
So I've got to look at Brad,
see where I'm at here.
- Yeah. I was curious, can you touch those five?
- No problem.
- I stretch mine a lot, so.
- Yeah. I'm going to have to work more on mine.
- Of course I do stretch mine.
So Brad, you want to show on a stairs?
- Oh yeah.
Yeah. So in a stairway, it works good.
We'll just use this as a model,
and it really works well if you got
at least one handrail here or here.
Two of them is even better.
I'm just going to use a stick to hold it.
But you put- you have to have your shoes on,
and then you come up and make sure
the ball of your foot is over the edge
just a little bit.
If you're too far out, your foot slides off.
And if you're too far forward,
it doesn't work very well.
So, I'm going to get to the ball of my foot
and that'll kind of hold it.
And my knee is straight here
and I'm just gonna let my body weight-
and this is where having some-
- Yeah, I do this with two rails
and I do it also straight and with a knee bent.
- Yep. There we go.
- And that really gets aggressive.
- Now, do you do one foot at a time
or do you actually do both?
- I do. I start out with both
and then I focus on one.
- Yep. That's a good idea.
- It doesn't take very long.
- So we're gonna stretch these for
five seconds, 15, 30.
- It depends, if you're just stretching
to get ready for athletic event,
you know, you don't need it that long.
- Right.
- But if you're starting to stretch
to gain mobility, you might want to go 30 seconds.
- Sure.
- To even a minute.
- Yep.
- Now the last one is- and this is for
an old guy like me, who's nearly 62.
I'm going do split squats, but I'm going
to hold on to something like this,
but this, what I like about this,
I'm stretching my hip flexors,
but I'm also stretching my feet.
- So you're actually getting a stretch on this ankle.
- Yes.
- Getting a stretch back here.
- Yep.
- You're getting a stretch on your right side.
- It's kind of an active stretch
and you can go further and further forward
and really bend the knee over toes.
- And this is one of those things
that's really functional because like you said
at the beginning.
- Right.
- I'm going to reach down to grab something.
- Yep. You're going to-
- Exactly.
- Maintain your balance, your flexibility
for lifting things.
- I just found out for me the best way to
warm up my ankle is to do something active like that.
- Sure.
- I mean, it's ready for running
or whatever I want to do, so.
- Yeah.
- Kick box.
- Are we done?
- Yeah, we're done.
- Yeah. How come you don't have any
gray hair like me?
Did you take that- use that Grecian Formula?
- I wish I could.
I get this from my mom.
She had, she would be upset
because she didn't have gray hair.
She was in her 80s.
She's in her 90s now.
She has a little bit of gray hair.
- Yeah
My mom's the same way.
She's just got a little bit here
and here she's 85, going to be 86.
So I didn't, I got it from my dad.
It's falling out and it's grayed,
but you know, now we're babbling.
- My dad's all gone at a young age.
So I'm glad to have some hair hanging on.
All right, thanks for watching, folks.
- Take care.
(guitar music)