Although foot and ankle strength are often not spoken, but when you look at common injuries, there are a lot of common below the knee injuries than people think. Ankle sprain, Achilles tendonitis or rupture, plantar fasciitis and so on. Weaker ankle has strong correlation with other injuries including, knees, lower back and neck. Therefore, it is very important to strengthen your ankles.
Majority of times when people are asked to strengthen ankles, they only think of calf raises. However, calf is actually a group of muscles called gastrocnemius and soleus. Ankle and foot also has 27 other muscles. Calf raise itself can improve many of those 29 muscles but that is not enough.
Dorsiflexion and Plantarflexion
When you look at ankle movement, you have dorsiflexion and plantarflexion. Dorsiflexion is when ankle is moving so that toes are pointing towards you. Plantarflexion is when ankle is moving so that toes are pointing away from you. In dorsiflexion, primary muscle that point the foot upward is anterior tibialis. In plantarflexion, gastrocnemius and soleus are responsible for the movement.
When you perform calf raises where you stand and lift your heels up, you are primarily using gastrocnemius and soleus. This is provided that movement is performed while the knees are straight. When calf raise is performed while knees are in flexed position, primary muscle that works is soleus. Reason for this difference is due to gastrocnemius crosses over knee joint in posterior side and soleus stays below the knee. Therefore, in order to strengthen the ankle in plantarflexion is to perform two types of calf raises. One is with knees straight and another is with knees flexed.
Dorsiflexion side is also very important. Majority of times people do not spend time train their dorsiflexion or muscle called anterior tibialis, which is also known as shin muscles. When this muscle is weak, person can have knee pain when walking down the stairs or downhill. When stepping down, ankle goes through severe dorsiflexion while the heel is elevated. In simple term, "the knee is over the toes". When anterior tibialis is weak, there is no other protecting muscles available that all of the stress that anterior tibialis should be absorbing goes up to adjacent joint, which will be the knee.
There are 3 exercises that are important which can cover what I just shared with you. These exercises can be use as bulletproofing and strengthening to improve ones athletic capability such as sprint and jumping. Those 3 are leaning calf raises, heel elevated soleus raises, and tib raises. You can apply this to part of the warm up routine for your leg days.
Leaning Calf Raises (15-30 reps)
Leaning calf raises focuses on both stretching and strengthening of the entire muscles surrounding the ankles. As shown on video you can lean against pretty much anything that can hold your bodyweight. Make sure shoulders, hips, knees, are completely straight with entire foot is on the floor to start. If you have too much tension in your ankle or behind the knee bring your feet closer to the support as needed. From this position you will lift your heels up as high as you can. Once you can comfortably perform 30 repetitions you can step back further or perform the exercise with single leg.
Heel Elevated Soleus Raises (15-30 reps)
Heel elevated soleus raise is somewhat opposite of leaning calf raises. First you are closer to the support. Second is you are flexing your knees and placing the load to your toes. Very important portion is, although knees are flexed, from knee to top of the head should be straight. Also, you want to load on your toes as much as possible so that heels are forced to be elevated. Of course, if there is any discomfort, back off so that you can work on the exercise without discomfort. Some challenge you may have is as you lift you heel up during the exercise, the knees may also extend as well. Make sure that only joint that is moving is ankles.
Tib Raises (15-30 reps)
Tib raise is opposite movement from two other exercises working on strengthening the anterior tibialis. Simply, you are leaning with your hip against the wall and raising your toes in this position. As shown on video, only body parts that is against the wall is hip. Intensity can be controlled by how far the foot is away from the wall. Closer the easier. Although 30 repetitions is a goal make sure to focus on how high you can raise your toes first. Quality of movement must come first.
Ankle strength is the first line of defense to all of the other joint functioning and should not be avoided during your strength workout unless you are working out just for your looks. Ankle strength will also complement with all of the other exercises including squat, deadlift, overhead press, and so on.
Perform these 3 exercises for 1-2 times per week. This is a injury prevention exercises and may not see tremendous benefit like muscle hypertrophy or pump you may feel in legs or arms exercises, however, balance and ankle mobility/strength will improve.
Lateral Ankle Movement
So far, I have shared dorsiflexion and plantarflexion. There are other movement pattern called inversion and eversion. Picture on the right is inversion where big toe side of the foot is pointing upward. Second picture is eversion where pinky side of the foot is pointing upwards. Although injuries can happen in both movement, common injury is in inversion or may known as "rolling the ankle".
Ankle sprain is common in sports and you may think it is sports only injury. However, even when you are walking outside on uneven surface, ankle sprain can happen and may lead to falling and further serious injury. Ankle and foot being complicated in structure, recovery time also takes time. You may not able to prevent ankle sprain 100%, yet the chance of getting injury by exercising 1-2 times per week will help decrease the chance of injury.
3 exercises mentioned above does help strengthen the ankles to prevent ankle sprain but it is also important to exercise in a directions that can cause injury. In this case exercise involves both eversion and inversion movements. Exercise itself is very simple and can be done anywhere. If you currently have an ankle injury, you may want to go slow with the movement but keep moving for it will help the recovery faster.
Importance of Foot and Ankle
Ankle or foot training is not as glamorous as bench press, squats, deadlift, bicep curls, and so on and yet all of those exercise does require ankle and foot in one way or the other. Just by standing and walking, foot and ankle gets more usage than the pec or biceps. If you every experienced any ankle or foot injury, you know how annoying it is and does take decent amount of time to recover.
Add some ankle exercises 1-2 times per week for either part of your leg day warm up or finisher. Increasing foot and ankle strength and mobility will not only help you avoid injury but also increase the strength in many of your lifts.
Kota Shimada
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