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Optimum Body Mechanic – Week 1

Optimum Body Mechanic – Week 1
25
Aug

Week 1!

Listen up people, in this post Venard discusses the importance of all things, ankle.

“Ankle injuries whether past or current are a common presentation in clinic and have a big impact on your body. Ankles, a pretty important structure and they do a lot more than you give it credit for. Often bearing the brunt of a lot of abuse. Your choice of footwear, terrain you are walking on, change of direction in sports, impact (landing from a jump, sparring in martial arts, etc) are some of the common contributing factors to ankle injuries.

The ankles connect the feet to the rest of the body. So any problems here can likely cause problems elsewhere in the body. Presentations of pain in the knee, hips, shoulders, head, all the way to the wrists have been mapped all down to an ankle injury. How it impacts your body? Remember that time when you went over on your ankle and you hobbled for a while. Well, your body was learning to avoid that pain in the ankle and it will adapt to the positioning. Through repetition aka steps/ hobbling, our bodies learn this pattern. Considering that we walk a couple of thousand steps per day or more, that is a LOT of reps. Your body has learnt to compensate for the ankle injury. Lifestyle and training stress will eventually expose this pattern and present itself as pain.

Commonly when someone injures their ankle, they have it strapped up to restrict movement. Some support is helpful, but more importantly it is the dysfunctional pattern that needs resolving when the swelling has gone down and strapping removed. A normal ankle should be able to move in all 3 planes on motion. Up, down, left, right and internal and external rotation. If one or more planes of motion is missing, something else will be working harder to make up for it”

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Client 1: male, mid 20s, highly active, weightlifter presented with lower back pain and hip pain when squatting. He had been doing all the mobility drills, foam rolling, stretching, massage, etc and it still wasn’t shifting. Using unique assessment protocols, it was found that a very old ankle injury (over 8 years ago playing Rugby) is now wreaking havoc on his hip and lower back. His lower back and hips were actually fine. No wonder all the massage, stretching, mobility drills he was doing wasn’t making much progress.
After a five minute correction of the ankle, lower back and hip pain had pretty much resolved. A bonus side effect of this was after a few days of working his homework (it’s a 2 minute homework!!!), his subsequent squat sessions resulted in no pain, better positioning- more depth and more vertical torso and equal distribution of force due to hips shifting back to the middle instead of over to one side. He even got a personal best in his squat. YUP! A personal best squat within a week of being in pain. This client has not needed any further reviews or treatments for his ankle.

Client 2: female, mid 30s, gym goer, presenting with knee and hip pain and difficulty performing any plyometric movements in the gym. She has seen numerous therapists and medical professionals and they prescribed stretches, glute activation and one professional concluded it was just a normal female gait pattern!!! Training wise, being able to squat comfortably was a struggle. This particular knee issue has been bothersome for over a decade.
After assessing her, it was found to be her ankle causing her issues. No one bothered to look there. After her correction, knee and hip pain pretty much resolved and squat improved greatly.

So if you fancy freedom from pain and injury, increased performance, better quality movements, even personal bests in such a short amount of time and you’re still injured and done all the foam rolling, lacrosse ball rolling, band stretches, mobility drills, massages, rehabilitation exercises, etc. Then drop us an message to arrange your FREE Discovery session and get that ankle checked out. We use the latest methodology and protocols to assess the ankle and its effect on the body.

Remember PTW clients get a 10% discount!

“Stay strong, stay healthy”

Team PTW