Now that we’ve spent the past three weeks talking about chronically tight calves and how to beat them, I wanted to finish up the series by taking a step back and drawing you a formal road map with all of the pieces. Your big take away from the preceding posts should be that recovering from anything “chronic” is a process. There is no magical overnight cure or gear change. The reason for this is that you are not only dealing with an injured area that has gotten stuck, but you are also dealing with all of the compensation patterns you’ve developed to work around it.
The good news is that all of that can be reversed. It just requires expanding your self treatment areas and focusing on the different parts of the problem versus where the symptoms are. The best way to start that process? A thorough self evaluation to identify and assess the potential problem areas.
Self Evaluation
**Click here to download the PDF check list that goes with it**
I can’t emphasize enough how important this step is. Knowing where you are starting at from a mobility perspective is half the battle and the only true way to measure your progress. It’s that mobility that is the key at the end of the day. Without it, all of the strength work in the world won’t matter.
In the post you’ll see that we’re focusing on the entire leg chain. More specifically, we’re breaking up that focus into the following areas:
- foot (toes/forefoot, arch/midfoot, rearfoot/heel)
- ankle
- knee
- hip
The thing to remember is that a “tight calf” includes two layers of calf muscles. The deep layer includes your posterior tibialis and toe flexors, all of which wrap around behind the inside of your ankle and under your arch. The superficial layer includes the better known gastrocnemius and soleus. At a minimum, a “tight calf” is affecting three areas: 1) the knee due to the gastroc crossing the joint where it attaches to the femur, 2) the ankle, and 3) the rear and mid foot due to the long tendons wrapping under the medial arch.
The importance of those three areas is that they are your shock absorption. The minute your foot makes contact, it works to adapt to the surface you are on and starts the process of transmitting that impact up the leg. If that process is interrupted, it makes it very difficult for your foot and ankle to make the switch from shock absorption to propulsion. In other words, that difficulty rushes things, whether that’s your stride, a pedal stroke, etc. Instead of being able to stabilize and recruit the bigger muscle groups upstream, you get stuck with less time. The only thing your body can do is compensate to keep you from falling over your own two feet.
One of the common ways that it does this is by using rotation. This is why we look at the toes and the hip. Your mobility in these areas is a good indicator of how much you’re compensating. The biggest problem with compensation is that the muscles it uses are not designed for that kind of workload. It’s why they burn out and stiffen up. In most cases, these can be the most stubborn muscles to loosen up, especially if they’ve been stuck like that for a period of time.
Treatment- Level One
From the self evaluation, we moved onto level one in our treatment posts. The levels are set up based on how far away from the calves we are working. That means level one focuses on the ankle and knee and everything that moves those two joints.
Treatment- Level Two
Level Two expands the treatment areas from the first level to include the hip and foot. Depending on your self evaluation, you may find that these areas are actually tighter/more restricted than the areas in level one. Remember what we said about compensation! It can be tough to restore motion to areas that are overworked and locked up as a result. The back of the hip in particular can be stubborn! There are big rewards for getting your hip rotation back. First, it makes it much easier to loosen up the hip flexors. Second, it also makes a night and day difference in terms of unlocking your hamstrings. Remember, the hamstrings and gastroc criss-cross behind the knee. Loosen one and you will be default improve the other.
The same can be said for the foot. We know that muscles strictly within the foot are the intrinsics. We also know that there are long tendons that come down into the foot as well. Both groups of muscles will impact each other.
Treatment- Level Three
The last level of our treatment shifted gears from mobility work to strength work. Like I said above, it’s important to work both parts. More often than not I hear athletes talking about strength work instead of the mobility component. If it can’t move, the strength work will likely reinforce those compensation patterns you’ve been developing. Loosen things up and then focus on technique and relearning the right movement patterns. That’s the key to truly restoring mobility, strength and muscle balance to your legs.
Another thing that this post talks about is the importance of posture and it’s impact on how you propel yourself forward. Chronically tight anything will change how you carry your body and where your center of mass is. It doesn’t take big changes to fix this, but it does take some focused effort.
The next steps!
As you restore mobility and balance, you can shift the work above into more of a maintenance mode. That means you can start targeting key workouts for “recovery workouts”. The great thing about going through the work above is that it will give you valuable insight into where your legs are tight. It will also give you insight into what a good day feels like and what a bad day feels like in terms of overall stiffness/tightness.
Sample recovery workout (using the same techniques from the above levels/links):
- Start with the foam roller. 1 minute per group for the following: bottom of foot, shin, toe flexors (inside shin behind ankle), calf, hamstring, adductor, back of hip, front of hip and quad, low back. Total time- 10 minutes per leg.
- That foam roller is your self evaluation. You should be taking note of what’s more sore than normal (which you should now know!).
- Follow up the roller with stretching. 20 seconds each for the following: shin, calf (with knee straight + bent and with rotation variations; yup that’s a total of four!), hamstring, adductor, hip flexor, quad, and back of hip.
- Reassess? Did the tightness improve with stretches or not?
- If yes, you have the option of using the tennis ball mobilizations to try and release any of those sore spots you found while rolling.
- If no, time to use the joint mobilizations. Focus on the hip and ankle first. Then you can expand to include the big toe and knee.
- Follow up additional techniques with a second round of stretches.
- Ice anything that’s sore for 10 minutes and call it a day.
When should you be using “recovery workouts”?
- Target your hardest workouts and your longest workouts.
- Try to sneak in a recovery workout between these workouts and your next workout. If you schedule multiple hard workouts in a row, then wait till your rest day for the full routine.
- On the other days, stretching is a must. This can be done throughout the day using the one stretch per hour. Just cycle through your list and the work is done before you even get home from work. If you have the time, follow it up with a rolling session. If not, maintain your stretches and roll on days where things are stiff or just to check in with your legs and see how they’re feeling.
Closing thoughts
The last thing I want to mention before finishing this series up is the importance of form and technique to your longevity as an athlete. As endurance athletes we literally take millions of steps and pedal strokes. For some us, unfortunately that means millions of repetitive actions that are reinforcing bad technique. Remember, for each person bringing a life time of experience to the table, there are three of us coming to endurance sports with a team sport background or none at all.
Continued injuries and problems year in and year out are a warning. At the very least they are worth having the following discussion with yourself:
- Do I have the mobility to perform my sport?
- Do I have the strength to use that mobility? If I had a dollar for every high mileage runner I’ve worked with who couldn’t perform a full squat, deadlift, situp etc, I’d be retired! Simply because you put in mileage doesn’t mean you have an ounce of functional strength. Strength and endurance are two very different things.
- Are mobility/strength limitations preventing me from using good technique?
- Are my gear choices or setup getting in the way? You may want a minimalist shoe or a super aggressive bike position, but you’re body may be waving the white flag to tell you it isn’t ready for it.
- Is it a lack of knowledge about what good form/technique is? Most of us didn’t have coaches analyzing and tweaking our form as we grew up when we came to endurance sports. Most of us hopped off the couch or are coming back to sports after a break. Maybe we’re changing sports all together?
The great news is that it’s easier than ever to find what good technique is. Get on you tube or google. Look up running technique or cycling posture and technique. There are countless coaches out there who talk about this stuff all day long. Have a friend video tape you and then compare. In other words, don’t just stop with the mobility/strength work. Continue building on that new foundation by learning how to apply it properly.