Here is a slight modification to the well known Barbell Ankle Stretch.
Great stretch, if you can get get in the start position.
Note: His feet are together. By doing this you create some external rotation in the ankles, thus preventing the arches from collapsing.
Will try this exersice with my feets together from now on then. Have very bad ankle mobility and it doesn’t seem to get any better and i’ve been stretching my ankles methodically before my training for the last 2 years. Doing this excercise but with my feets apart, and regular “ankle/calves” stretching where i push my knee forward both with a straight leg and with a slightly bent leg.
My question is if there is other people that by doing some new stretching exercise notice a slow change to better ankle mobility or if some of us just are doomed to be in very high heel shoes when we squat and do weightlifting?
Ankles are a bitch of a body part to gain flexibility in, but being honest with myself I slack off with stretching. I myself use high heel shoes and it just makes the lifts a deficit and I feel ridiculous being a good few inches taller lol. One of my ’15 goals is to seriously improve my shoulder and ankle flexibility, will incorporate this exercise more often.
It’s been a year, care to update?
It’s been a year, care to update?
I’ve noticed improvements in my ankle stretches. I don’t exactly do a whole lot of them. I probably spend about 5 minutes a day on active ankle stretches. The rest of the time, I’m making sure that I’m walking with an arched foot and good movement habits to insure that I’m not causing any drawbacks to my flexibility routine.
I found that improving other facets of my lower body flexibility has helped my ankle flexibility more than just ankle stretches. It seems that the more flexible my hips are, as an example, the more lenient my body need for ankle flexibility needs are required of me. On off days, holding your best air squat position for about a minute or longer will at least feel like maintenance work for the ankles. If i’m lazy for a day or two, my ankles feel awfully stiff.
I did this stretch with 100kg across my knees today during my warm up, snatches felt much better and it was easier to keep the chest up when receiving the bar.
Are the knees separated on this stretch or does he have them together. I will try both regardless I as I like to do the regular barbell ankle stretch for my warm-up.