The One Thing I Like About Wearing Heels
IG @thebettercoach
Let me explain ->
When you squat down, you need a certain level of stretchiness in your lower leg to allow your torso to properly move down. Most of us lack that stretchiness - especially my fellow runners, including athletes whose sport involves a lot running like soccer and lacrosse.
Without that stretchiness, your body will let you squat all the down but it will make compensations. Two common compensations for this particular problem are your heels will come up, and/or your chest will fall forward.
These can be problematic because they increase stress on your joints, which lead to pain and injury down the road. For instance, if your heels come up, your weight will go forward which will stress the knees. I’m not saying it is always bad to squat with your knees over your toes, but in this case, if your heels are off the ground then knees over toes is not a good thing. If your chest drops, it will add stress to your lower back and turn your core and torso stability completely off.
There are things you can do to work on this, and wearing heels when you squat is not one of them, by the way. I just happened to be wearing heels, dropped something, and when I squatted down to pick it up, that’s when this blog post became an idea.
Anyway, here is a good way to tell if you lack ankle stretchiness aka dorsiflexion:
Watch the video below from 2:25 - 2:41. If when you do this, your knee touches the wall and you can keep your heel on the ground, you ankle is probably good to go. If not, your ankle dorsiflexion could probably use some work.
Here are some exercises that will help increase ankle stretchiness:
Ass to calf hold.
The goal is to get to several minutes down there. Starting out in 10 second intervals is what I used to do, and that is completely okay. And if you need to use a something to hold to help balance and keep your chest up at the bottom, please do and see picture below for reference.
Other exercises include:
Any calf stretch.
Try the exercise in the video at 3:52, and watch until the end for more #theshining #stephenking
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