This is Brent coming at you with another calf stretch. In this video we're going to
go over the slant board stretch as an alternative to the wall stretches I showed
you before. Although that's a great stretch and it's something that you
should have in your repertoire, to get the most out of it is actually fairly
complicated to teach. So I'm going to show you guys how this stretch fulfills all of
our criteria for a great stretch. It supports the bottom of the foot so we
don't take the chance of stretching out those intrinsics of the foot, those
intrinsic flexors that support the medial arch. We're going to keep the hip in
a neutral position, so none of this long sit, pulling up with a strap, which puts
the hip into flexion, knee into total extension, pulling up into dorsiflexion
which has the potential to over stretch that sciatic nerve over time. We can put
a considerable amount of force through a slant board, right. We have our entire
body weight contributing to this force, and lastly, this is where things get
really really simplified, in that wall stretch I had to work really hard to get
somebody from that everted, turned-out position, that we're trying to correct
with a calf stretch, into this inverted and dorsiflexed position. With a slant
that becomes two simple queues. I think if you have tried that wall stretch I
showed, you realize it takes a little bit of effort. I'm going to have my friend, Yvette,
come out, she's going to help me demonstrate. So, first things first, the
reason I've never showed this stretch before, I hadn't found these OPTP slants
before, and this is not just an endorsement for a product, slant boards
had the tendency to be really expensive, like in that hundred to two hundred
dollar range, it makes it very hard for me to look at a client or a patient and
go, 'hey I need you to get this for home', not to mention some of the slant boards
I've had in the past were a little rickety on top of being expensive. These
OPTP slants you can get on Amazon for 21 bucks, and it comes with two, if I beat
them up it doesn't matter a terrible amount, they seem to last
three to six months anyway, and then I just buy another set. I can refer a
client to get these for home, so I know that in between our sessions they're
continually working on gaining that dorsiflexion. Now, let's get back to the
queues on this stretch so I can show you how simple this really is. Rather
than that wall stretch where we had to turn the foot in and work on tibia on
foot inversion and take a step sideways and do all this queuing, all I have to
ask Yvette to do is go, "okay stand up on the slant board, hold on to this for
support." She's going to turn her feet a little pigeon-toed, so pinky toe pointing
forward, or fifth metatarsal pointing forward, and then once she gets into a
little bit of rotation this way, all I need to do is externally rotate her legs
a little bit to pop her arches back up, and I can do that with a simple queue of
squeeze your glutes, and stand up nice and tall. Alright, so now we have a nice calf
stretch. We have the hip in neutral position, so no sciatic nerve issues, we
have the foot in inversion, so that's not a problem. We have a considerable
amount of weight with our whole body weight in the stretch, and it's
absolutely no effort for the patient or client. This actually, for the
most part, unless somebody has arthrokinematic dysfunction that you're going to
have to take care of, I actually find this more effective than doing manual
stretching on a patient or client. Now, the only problem with the OPTP slant
is that the angle isn't very steep. So this is great for somebody who just came
in who is very tight, but after a few weeks of doing this they're going to get as
much as they can out of the OPTP slant and we're going to have to find something
a little bit more intense. So we're going to trade in two pieces of cheap foam, and
by cheap I just mean less expensive, which I love, for another piece of cheap
foam, which is the half foam roll. So if I take this half foam roll and put it flat
side up, when Yvette comes and steps on it and does the exact same queues,
she's pinky toe pointed forward, she gets her heels down on the
floor, and she can be leaned back a little bit, that's okay and then she
squeezes her glutes, we're right back to having a nice slant board, bottom of foot
supported, she's in that inverted position. Squeeze your glutes, and
you can see here that the half foam roll is actually a fairly steep angle. So this
gives her a lot more to work on. For Yvette, personally, I would actually give her
the half foam roll for home, rather than the OPTP slants because the OPTP
slants looked a little not challenging enough for her. So there you go.
I want you to learn that wall stretch. That wall stretch is important
in the previous video. It's important that you have a technique that requires
absolutely no equipment. All of you who have runners with tight calves who
end up doing these events and need some way to warm up beforehand, they need
something with no equipment, but for your clubs get something that you can use for
a slant board, it will make your life a ton easier, and then make sure that if
your clients have lower leg dysfunction, your patients have lower leg dysfunction
and some sort of ankle, foot, lower leg injury, that you get this stuff for home
so that they can continue working on it. I hope you get a huge results, I
look forward to talking to you again soon.