How Functional Exercises Made My Ankles More Stable
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Hey, welcome back my name is CJ Kobliska, Director of programming here at Gymnazo. And I’d love to share with you ways that I love to integrate the woodwedge into my training for trail running specifically. Now I love the woodwedge because it provides an opportunity to go through four main positions with our ankles dorsiflexion, loading more that posterior half of the calf kind of soleus down to the arches, thinking about going up hill in a hike, we’ve also got the other end of that more plantar flexion or going down a hill. So getting a bunch of this into your load through the shin, and also opportunity for my knees to go quite a bit further by body to stabilize the backside. And then we have a combination, as we go lateral, we got both feet on the wedge puts one ankle and foot into more E version and the other side into more inversion. And vice versa, when you flip it around 180 degrees. So I call this a four position squat. dorsiflexion first suite it plantar flexion first, so we go downhill dropping in should provide a lot more range and a squat because we’re not pre loading that lower calf and the soleus. So this is great for just learning how to stabilize coming downhill, my body wants to go here if I were just to surrender, but if I’m able to kind of shift my weight on my foot back a little bit, not so much into the forefoot where I feel like I’m falling forward, but kind of settle my hips back into more the backside of my arch and into my heel a bit, I feel quite a bit more stable and centered. Now then the other side, when we go into the dorsiflexion. Because my soleus is already pre loaded, my body’s got to do something to find the range in the squat. If I try to squat lower and lower, as I drop in my ankles run out of dorsiflexion, it’s my body tries to compensate by shifting back. So what I like to do is take myself right to a zone where my ankles say that’s as far as you can go. And then drop in with a little bit of more of a heel lift. As when I’m climbing up a hill, my heels pretty much stay off of the ground or very, very light. So I’m very front foot loaded. So it’s give me an opportunity to load up a little bit more through the arch, but more to the soleus and allow my knees to go beyond my toes naturally and tend to drive up and still find that stability, I find this super helpful for uphill, especially for you runners up hills, working into that dorsiflexion state at the fullest range, where you feel those anterior tip muscles firing off, and then letting the knees and rest the body rebalance to find that range. That was super fun one two is going into this mix a lot of times what we’ll find is that our body will compensate to one side or the other whichever one we feel more comfortable with. And because this top ankles in a bit more dorsi flexion and aversion, I’m not going to necessarily get as much range as if I tried to shift my weight to the other foot, do it for yourself feel it out. But there’s no wrong way to do it, try to see where you can shift your weight in multiple directions and still maintain stability, drop it into a full squat, I immediately feel that angle gets shorter, and actually turns on my glute a bit more when I’m going into that inverted position. And I feel the outside of my ankle loading up on the lower side preventing me or decelerating me from going down that hill. So right now I’m kind of biasing my right leg as a squat. If I did that same thing biasing my left leg, I feel a tremendous amount more weight that’s about to be pushing myself off that wedge. And a lot of times when I’m running trails, and I feel that shift, I’m able to recenter especially coming in hot around the corner, see somebody coming at me, dodgem and then keep rocking and rolling simply on the other side to finish out these four position neutral squats, I could position myself in center like this position myself over this foot, or I could position myself over that back foot in any spectrum in between or even out side. So there’s simple ones even going into more deadlift style to load up more that posterior hip hamstring area. Same kind of thing that happened here, but probably quite a bit more calves because they are pre loaded. And then as we go into that mix position, going to create some different sensations of loading that fascial tissue on that lateral calf. Now those are the simple ones. Other things like to do or a single leg balance and working into a reach matrix, we take that same path for position coming to down down the hill, we have an anterior reach, shifts our weight forward into that knee but also our body starts to compensate backwards, it’s a good thing. Take it backwards at the foot and lean forward. Now it’s like coming full steam down a hill. We have the lateral same side, lateral opposite side, same side rotation, and opposite side rotation. This is a great test drill. If you have trouble going down hills and you’re lacking stability and one of those angles and to your post here. Same side lateral opposite side lateral seems that rotation or opposite side rotation, chances are your body’s bracing and holding and protecting and probably why you’re getting some discomfort, discomfort in the ankles, the knees or even low back because we’re holding and bracing versus allowing and decelerating our motion each step of the way. Did you do it the other foot as well. We continue that same path Her one foot single a balance we have an anterior reach. Now with a primary load and dorsiflexion, we have a posterior reach, again, like going up a hill. If we can find stability in all six of these directions, when we go uphill, it will be easier because your body has more movement options and knows what it feels like to stabilize as we either step on a loose rock, maybe some loose shale and some dirt that’s sliding us around, far does it brace and freeze and try to contract, it just continues to pull us to our next step. Now even more fun, you put ourselves into e-version body is driving down that way, gravity is pulling us downward straight down. But because of the angle, all of our weight wants to shift away. So we’ve got to find where we feel best stacked. And I like to think head over the foot or just outside and that angle helps quite a bit. We have an anterior reach a posterior reach, same side lateral, opposite side lateral, same side rotation, and opposite side rotation reach, and we can continue to Maitre size all six of those directions. Again, if you’re not doing too well, this initially, because you got to practice you’ve got to wake up those propria receptors that feel our body shifting or loading in a different direction, and then learn how to manipulate that under our control, make it very efficient. Then we got the inverted position. Again body wants to go down that hill, we have to learn to load through different parts of the foot to stabilize us and stack our head on top of that foot to help balance ourselves as well. Simple ones, two foot squats we did some deadlifts we did some single leg reaches. Now on an all time favorites, it’s actually going into a split stance and working on different angles of rotation, simulating landing on that leg and getting ready to push off into the next leg. I don’t like to be super stiff and rigid coming down a hill I don’t want to be a tree that’s just gonna get uprooted, tilt over and smack hard to the ground. I want to be like water rolling down the mountain. And in order to do that, I need to feel which way I can slosh Can I slosh forward, back side side rotate, rotate. If I can I know that I can refine my center, and then always adding speed on top of that so that when I am coming down full speed on the mountain, I know how to decelerate that momentum as well not just the motion, not just the direction, but with that level of force that my body is having to handle. So if we go into a split stance, very first one here, again, this is not an exhaustive list, but just some things to think about. And to explore yourself as you go split stance back heel up and shift my weight in this front leg. So I’ve got this foot super e verted, I’m dropping down, this butt is loaded. And I’m gonna take my hand as I squat, I’m going to chop down hip height, chest height, and overhead height, low, medium, high, low, medium, high, low, medium, and high. And each one of these, my thoracic spine is getting a slightly different bit of load. As they come down, I’m chopping. And as I come across a more rotated, and as I come up, it actually throws my body down that hill a little bit. So no matter where I am, if I’m trying to get around somebody, if I’m stepping up on a hill real quick and then coming back down, I know my body will take care of the rest. From here we go then into an inverted or inverted side. So split stance, like keep that back heel up. So it’s not inhibiting me there. And now that weight is going to come down to this other side leg. There’s a lot of times when people are afraid to roll their ankles, if we can train in the dangerous position in a safe environment that isn’t super reactive. Now when we go out onto the trail, our party is more kind of tame and knows what’s going to happen as that foot hits the ground. We can’t prepare for everything, but we can prepare better for what we’re going to expect out on the trails. So in this front leg, now I’m in that inverted position, I can squat, take it low, chest tight, and then high, low, chest, high, low, chest and high. And as we get to that one, he’ll start to feel that whole lateral edge that fascia starting to lengthen and shorten turning it into more spring power.
Then we have the other side. So we go into LXX. But now into the verted position on that front leg head is loaded on that top foot, I feel about 80% of my weight here. Back foot is light and heel is up, I squat, reach low, chest, high, low, chest high doing that for cycles of upwards of 30 seconds to a minute, think about what you can handle on that one side and then switching it to split stance right, my right foot just landed and I’m letting landing on some it isn’t a more inverted surface kind of that incline to the inside of the foot. My body wants to go that way. I’m going to push my foot down more to my big toe. And now I’m going to save that same thing low low, load high and higher, low, medium, high sweep up, given my hip a chance to interact with my foot and interact with my thoracic spine so that when I do land on that on the trail, I can get ready to land into my next step. A great way to just bring awareness to the appropriate sectors around the ankle. Walk the foot and give the hip a chance to stabilize on top there. Now if you wanted to get something more dynamic, I like to bring in the ropes here, because it’s like I said, water coming down the mountain, you ever seen water trudge through, got little waterfalls, little creeks and crevices that it can run through, I want to feel like that when I’m running. So with the light rope, any one of these positions will do to but again, I like to prefer the inverted inverted position, it’s the one with the ankles, pretty susceptible to injury, if it’s untrained, I don’t know what’s going on. Now what I’m going to our xx to do a little bit of a drag in here. And I could drag in either direction. So to my east, I can kind of load into that rotation come up, load into it, push off, load, push off, load, push off, even staying down, I could pick one foot, I could switch to the other foot, it’s turf is slippery over here, so that this wedge is really functional, compared to rock out in the out in the open here. So I’m dropping in and throwing myself dropping in throw, if I go the opposite direction, right, take the rope to the west side. And the same kind of thing could drop in throw drop in throw. And just getting familiar with when I’m running through how to transfer to my next step, that’s a little bit more dangerous to do that a little jump switch on a small surface, but life is dangerous. What’s life without a little bit of risk? Right, if I want to add a little bit more momentum to it, grab a little bit heavier rope. We’ll get real wild with this one. And I can do the same. Dragons now got a lot more stuff throwing me to one side or the other, my ankle has to work a little bit harder. I’m saying ankle, but it really is my whole body. But ankle is what we’re kind of localizing the position on here, Dragon one way, dragging the other side, he could hit split stance here, split stance here even work on switching, switching and switching and make this more of a reactive component. And building up in your spatial awareness while not looking at the wedge, just feeling for what your foot is doing at the base. So lots of fun things you can do that was just a small percentage of what’s possible. But I encourage you to explore that’s the same thing you can do on a much higher and tougher surface nominal, much more inversion, and much more easy version at the top here. That position there. Some scared somebody shitless because they’re like, oh my God, I’m gonna I’m gonna tear something. If you can hold this position, you’re not going to tear something. If you’re not starting to throw something and you’re having to react, and you’re not ready for it. Maybe that knee caves and maybe the ankle does rolling. But we start to progress somebody into steeper and steeper elevations. And maybe maybe more endurance and more reps and more time are essentially changing up the loads of what they’re doing on this extra on this wedge. We could throw a viper up here, do some chest squats, again, just exposing parts of the body and to deeper ranges of motion, not trying to cause injury or cause harm, but simply expose certain barriers or certain adaptations that we can make so that we when we are on the trail, we’re not worried about this, like oh my God, I need to step perfectly. A lot of times the conditions are imperfect. And if we can train for those imperfect conditions with perfect reps, now we’re gonna have a really fucking good time. So hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope you explore the wood wedge share Gymnazo Edu, Gymnazo Move Exploration Channel, sho me what you got with your wedge.
What kind of fun can you have while being safe and dangerous at the same time. Until next time, peace.
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