Daily Maestroism
DM #206
Thursday, December 15th, 2016
DM #206: Saw this twice today and knew I had to drop it for the DM.
Yes, if your ankle is tight and restricted, by all means, work on it. Get someone to work on it. Do whatever mobility work it is that you want. You absolutely must assess and address symptomatic and painful areas. But while you’re doing all that good stuff, figure out why that thing keeps getting tight in the first place.
Regional interdependence, fascial trains, planar dysfunction, the joint-by-joint approach, tensegrity…use whatever model you want, just realize that it’s all attached and connected. So, as it relates to tonight’s DM, let’s talk about the foot/ankle and your ‘core’. Lots of ways to use the core, one of the main ways being in an anti-rotational capacity. Aka to control rotation. Travel down to the foot/ankle, and we see that beautiful sub-talar joint, the talocrural joint (@biomechanicaldetective is always talking about how the talus is a torque converter), and the midfoot, and how they can work together to allow transverse plane movement, aka rotation.
Let’s tie it together now. If you can’t control rotation at your core, that force is going to bleed out and get dealt with somewhere else. Could be your hips, could be your knee, or, it could be your ankle. As I said in DM #150: The easiest way for you body to gain stability i s to take away mobility from somewhere else. So, find yourself lacking core ‘stability’ and it’s not out of the question to see that your body has taken away ankle ‘mobility’ as a nice little safety compensation.
Is this always the case? No. Can it happen? Absolutely. Remember, it’s all connected, and where you think it is, it ain’t. So if you find yourself hammering away at your ankle for months on end without any improvement, consider looking elsewhere and figuring why that badboy keeps getting locked down in the first place.
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