Ankle Mobility
When addressing mobility, you don’t need to spend 40 minutes per day foam rolling and doing “cutting edge” drills you found on Instagram.
In CrossFit, the ability of your ankle to flex and extend properly is going to greatly affect most movements that involve you standing up (pretty much everything from weightlifting, to facebooking while standing up). Your quads, core, and trunk can be strong enough to front squat 365 lbs, but if your ankles are crap, your front squat is most likely going to follow suit. Think of the ankle like the foundation of a skyscraper, if it’s not doing it’s job, there is going to be a lot of cleaning up to do.
When addressing mobility, you don’t need to spend 40 minutes per day foam rolling and doing “cutting edge” drills you found on Instagram.
You need to treat it like everything else.
- Test
- Treat
- Re-test
- Based on the feedback in the re-test, keep the treatment, or ditch it like that girl/boyfriend who never lets you use their phone, and move on until you find what is working.
Try out the Ankle flexion test we use in our athlete assessment as a starting point and indicator of progress. If you fail the test (cant touch the wall –see video), treat it and re-test. This will take you 8:00-12:00 and hopefully open your eyes to effective mobility, or at least add to your knowledge bank of corrective work and the universe at large.
P.S. Just kidding about the Facebooking thing. But seriously, I’m on Facebook, add me.
How this works.
- Create a neuromuscular window of opportunity by nerve flossing.
- Banded mobilization
- End range isometrics and eccentrics
- Isometric iso-dorsiflexion hold
- Front squat (light load)
Follow the video and audio demonstration and contact your coach for an in-depth assessment and corrective demos and homework to make headway in your mobility game.
