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If you are not proactively checking in on your ankles from time to time, there’s a very good chance they are locked up tight. The problem when this happens is that a lack of ankle range of motion has the ability to set off an incredible chain of events that are problematic and detrimental to your everyday life.
Kelly Starrett, renowned physical therapist and author, has documented the crucial function the ankles have in facilitating optimal performance in the rest of the body.
I have used this quote before and I will use it again here, because it exemplifies the chain reaction set off just by having a lack of mobility in the ankles:
“If you’re missing ankle range of motion, you have no choice but to compensate into an open-foot position, meaning that you stand, walk, run, and move with open knees and collapsed ankles. When this happens, you can’t expect everything to be okay….
If you’re missing foot extension or dorsiflexion, you’re going to turn your feet out to solve that range of motion problem and buffer the issue. Do this and ultimately say hello to bone spurs, Achilles tendonitis, Achilles ruptures, and a slate of other ankle problems. You can avoid all this if you maintain full ankle range of motion and understand good positioning. You have to make sure that the large drivers of your ankles are full range and supple.
Although the chief problem usually lies in the heel cords, the tightness transmits upstream. The gastroc, which is the powerful lower leg muscle that makes up your calf, is responsible for controlling your ankle. If those tissues get stiff, ankle and knee pain generally follow.” – Kelly Starrett
The quote comes from Starrett’s groundbreaking book, Becoming a Supple Leopard, which is called “The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance” for a reason. It is an all-in-one, problem-solving guide for your familiar pain points.
Getting back to Starrett’s insight, the first problem that starts to manifest is the position of your feet, specifically how they turn out into an open position by default.
If you kept up with that article just linked and The Causes and Solutions to Foot Turnout, you’ll know this is not something you want to take your chances with. It’s best to be proactive and work on fixing this issue before it creates other problems.
When you take up this open-foot position in all of life’s activities, especially the active ones, you’re exposing yourself to various forms of bad positioning that can lead to more injuries: overpronation of the feet, flat feet, tight and misaligned Achilles tendons, tight calves, open-position knees, and so on.
These issues all come with their own problems and can lead you down a path to imminent Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, or posterior tibialis tendonitis.
Although I say that my plantar fasciitis came from an athletic injury, what I have learned is that it had been coming on for some time.
I’ve had terrible ankle range of motion, foot turnout, and collapsed ankles well before I injured myself and had to deal with the consequences all at once. To think, the injuries could’ve been worse for me, I’m actually lucky that’s all I dealt with. I had no ruptures or tears that would’ve completely immobilized me.
Starrett further illustrates this by mentioning,
“The people who are most susceptible to plantar fascia issues are athletes, especially those who gravitate toward barefoot and Pose-centric running practices, and people who move with their feet turned out and stand with their arches collapsed.”
Plantar fascia issues are certainly prevalent with athletes, especially in the running community.
There are few runners I’ve engaged with who haven’t mentioned some sort of pain on the bottom of their foot at some point in their running career. This actually includes me as well, when I used to run more often that is.
It’s also a common issue for people who stand at work all day, presumably having their feet on a hard surface for around 8 hours.
Interesting tidbit: the majority of emails I get are from people who have had foot pain for a long time from working on a flat, hard floor (like a factory floor) and are on their feet all day. This even applies to people who are “stagnant” on a hard, flat floor all day like a grocery bagger, as was illustrated in my post: What My Chiropractor Had to Say About Minimalist Footwear.
Starrett continues,
“If you run a lot or are on your feet all day, there’s a good chance that the tissues of your lower leg are brutally tight and in need of some serious love. The musculature extending from your knee to your ankle along the inside of the shin – specifically the soleus, posterior tibialis, and gastrocnemius muscles – is responsible for giving your foot arch support. Anytime you stand, walk, or run, you are placing a demand on these tissues.
As the calf musculature becomes tight and locked up, people start defaulting to an open-foot position, which causes the ankle to collapse and places stress on the upstream tissues. To restore good positions and normalize these tissues, take a ball and smash it into the inside of your shinbone, working from the base of your knee down to your ankle bone….
This mobilization should be one of your first stops if you have plantar fascia problems, have posterior tibialis tendonitis, can’t get your foot into a good arch, or do a lot of running – especially barefoot-centric running.”
As you can see, the ankle’s range of motion dictates quite a bit of the well-being of the surrounding musculature. This is most commonly seen in the lower legs and feet where many of these muscles play off of the others and influence their functionality.
This is probably the sole reason I have spent so much of my blogging career focused on issues stemming from the lower legs. If you suffer from any of the previously mentioned injuries, that is a major indicator that there are unresolved issues sitting in your lower leg musculature.
What’s better is that you can most likely solve problems like these without going any higher than the knee. Most of the problem will be housed in the calves as they are prone to getting crazy tight.
If there is one piece of advice I can give to make your life easier as you deal with these complex injuries, it would be to sort out your calves before anything else. I promise you that it will at least improve your injury (if it’s somewhere below the knee) to resolve some of that tightness.
The takeaway should be this,
“Remember, if your ankles are collapsed, it’s harder to keep your knees, hips, trunk, and shoulders in a stable position. In other words, if your base of support is compromised, everything upstream is compromised.” – Kelly Starrett
Making sure that you maintain full ankle range of motion should be an absolute priority, especially as an athlete.
The ankles are part of your stable foundation. Just like Starrett says, the ankles will expose everything above them to poor positions if they are not stable themselves.
Getting your ankle positioning correct is an investment into your body of paramount importance. It could be there difference between tearing your ACL and playing a sport for a few more years.
To learn more about how you can improve your ankle range of motion, check out the other articles that I linked throughout this post as I have covered most of these topics previously.
The methods I recommend, such as myofascial release, are safe and effective and will help you address the tension in your lower legs.
Also, check out Kelly Starrett’s book, Becoming a Supple Leopard. It’s a game-changer for anyone who wants to take control of their body and live pain-free. This is where I pulled all of his quotes from.
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