Are you a chronic ankle sprainer?
It could be that you're doing exactly the opposite of what you should be doing when
you're trying to prevent them from recurring,
and I'm going to show you exactly what you should be doing today.
What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
If you are a chronic ankle sprainer, right, and we know that normally once you do sprain
an ankle, it's something that usually happens over and over and over again.
Sometimes, one sprained ankle on one side can lead to a sprained ankle on the other
side because of compensation.
So, what I wanted to do today was show you in a video why what you might be focusing
on is exactly the opposite of what you should be focusing on to prevent that from happening.
I put up a little chart here.
Now, we know that whenever we're talking about a joint, or really, our whole body, we want
to have that perfect balance between mobility and stability, right?
You are an athlete when you are perfectly balanced between mobility and stability.
As a matter of fact, even when we're talking about the strength that you can generate,.
we're talking about the perfect balance between mobility and stability, right.
I showed you that with the rubber band a long time ago.
So, when we look at individual joints, though, we want to apply the same 2 criteria.
What is the mobility, what is the stability, of the joint?
And the things that are going to basically provide mobility or stability, are going to
be our muscles, our joints, and our ligaments.
So, let me give you one quick example in the shoulder.
If we look at the shoulder, between mobility and stability, well, the joints in the shoulder,
they need to be mobile.
It's a very mobile joint, and even if you're looking at athletics and requirements whether
it's throwing a football or throwing a baseball,
the mobility of the shoulder has to be there for it to function properly.
The muscles themselves need to be strong enough and toned enough to give us stability of that
joint, though.
So, we're talking about it again, the shoulder, the rotator cuff.
So, we want stability from our muscles.
We want mobility from our joints for our shoulder.
And of course, ligaments almost always provide further stability for that joint.
When we go to the ankle, the ankle is very much the same.
But the problem is, we do things exactly the opposite.
So, if you think about what we do when we work on our ankles, we're always trying to
stretch our calves.
We're always trying to stretch our calves out to make our ankles feel looser, right?
And we're also always trying to, a lot of times, athletes especially, tape our joints,
right?
Tape our ankles to provide stability.
What I'm telling you guys is we want to do the exact opposite.
We don't want that.
We want mobility in our ankle joints.
We want stability through our ankle muscles, ok?
So, that being said, we have to consider maybe a little less calf-stretching, more stability
type exercise,
we can cover that in another video, but what I want to deal with today is the joint mobility.
So, let me take you over here and I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm on my way down, in a couple of days here, to Spring Training.
Now, you guys know that I've worked with the Mets for many years
One of the things you can recognize immediately if you go to any Spring Training Camp is guys
doing Leg Swings, right?
The drill where they come out and across their body.
A lot of guys think that the Leg Swing Drill is utilized to stretch this leg, ok.
Stretch the groin on this side, ok, the outside of the hip over here and it is a good, active,
or dynamic stretch for that purpose, but that's not why I think it's most valuable.
As a matter of fact, for our chronic ankle sprainer's, the guys that are watching right
now, you need to start doing Leg Swings routinely
because we want to start adding some mobility to your ankles.
So, here's the 3 things you want to do.
Firstly, you want to work with 3 different planes of motion.
So we got our front-to-back, ok, our sagittal plane, our frontal plane which is side-to-side,
and most importantly, our transverse plane.
If you look at it, the three things that I want you to start doing are start reaching
forward and coming back.
Alright, start reaching forward, and coming back.
Reach forward, don't touch, and come back.
What you're getting is exaggerated dorsiflexion here.
I could actually take my shoe off.
You're getting exaggerated dorsiflexion of the ankle.
So, you're getting good mobility through the ankle, each time trying to reach out a little
bit further with that toe, ok, just like that.
And don't worry about the knee going past the toe, guys.
This is not a loaded situation.
This is a mobility drill at that ankle.
Ok, that's the first move.
The second move, we want to get into the frontal plane.
So, what we want to do is actually have our ankle go into pronation and then supination.
Ok, so the way we do that is we're going to lean our foot out to the side, but lean our
body to the other side, ok.
So, we lean that way, and we come across.
You can see, the ankle caves in, ok, it travels in.
The knee flexes and travels in.
Then, we want to come across the body.
You can immediately see how it rolls out, ok.
So, we're going across and then in.
And across, and then in.
And across.
There's a lot of mobility going on down there, ok.
And then finally, transverse plane is incredibly important because, remember, we move in 3
dimensions and there's a lot of rotation going on through whatever we do.
In every lift we do, and I don't care if you're an athlete, in the gym, there's rotational
torque forces with everything we do.
So, what we want to do is utilize our Leg Swing across our body.
The key here is you want to keep this heel down on the ground.
Basically, we're going to come across.
Point the toe up in the air as high as you can, and then come across.
Rotate the leg out and then point the toe up in the air.
So, all this winding around is giving us this sort of stress on my left ankle on the ground
ok.
So, watch again.
As I come across, up, and then to the side.
Just like that.
Heel stays down.
What you're going to notice is, if you are tight, you're going to see your foot start
twisting out to the side just like that.
Every time it's going to want to turn further and further in that direction.
You'll know right away.
If you got bad mobility, likely, you're going to wind up spraining that ankle.
And likely, once you do that, you're going to sprain it over and over again.
So again, plant that foot down, and work on your Leg Swings.
It could be even just 20 in each direction, ok?
Not to mention you're getting a good, dynamic stretch of the groin on the right side.
So, guys, you might be thinking backwards when it comes to your ankle.
You want to make sure that you're doing the right things.
Get your mobility in your joints.
Get your stability through the muscles.
And obviously, you want to keep those tendons and ligaments tight.
Those are the things that are going to give.
That's what happens when you get a sprained ankle.
When you have the wrong balance going on between stability and mobility, those tendons and
those ligaments specifically in the ankle, are the ones that give.
Those are the things that create the sprain, and those are the things you are trying to
come back from.
If you found this helpful, make sure you leave me a comment below.
Let me know.
Are you one of these chronic ankle-sprainer's?
Right, you know who you are.
Let me know, what are you doing to deal with it?
Are you just one of the guys that winds up stretching your calves obsessively thinking
that's going to work?
Maybe you might want to switch it up.
Leave your comments below and a thumb's up.
And in the meantime, guys, if you want to start training like an athlete.
Yes.
I get a chance to work with some of the best in the world, but I still have the ability
to take what we work with and bring it right to you.
That's exactly what we're doing here, and that's exactly what we do with the ATHLEANX
Training Program, and you can get that at ATHLEANX.COM.
Guys, I say it all the time.
If you want to look like an athlete, you got to start training like an athlete, and you
got to start doing the things they do.
Alright, guys, I'll be back here in just a few days.
I'll report back when I get back, but I think you'll find this helpful.
Start doing these things, and you'll really start to see a difference.