![ankle mobility ankle mobility](https://elevatephysio.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/maxresdefault.jpg)
![ankle mobility ankle mobility](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/4d/c2/de4dc23708eb5cfd39aa5619db2c7638.jpg)
Can you lift the ball of your foot off the ground without moving your body?
![ankle mobility ankle mobility](https://www.aliciarclark.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-02-08-09.07.06-scaled.jpg)
Stand straight with your feet together.A telltale sign of poor mobility is if your heels routinely come off the ground. Perform a basic air squat a few times and have someone watch you.So how do you know if you have poor ankle mobility? There are a couple of ways to find out: Obviously an OLY shoe doesn’t have as high a heel as, well, heels. On the other hand, Greg Everett points out that OLY shoes are around for a reason-to increase an ankle’s range of motion and allow them to dorsiflex. Now, I know what you’re going to say: “What about OLY shoes?” There is a varying debate on the usefulness of OLY’s- Matt Chan has actually attributed a knee injury he sustained to lifting in this shoe. Most shoes have a heel that is slightly higher than the front of the shoe, so wearing them excessively will result in a progressive loss of flexibility. Frequently wearing shoes with elevated heels.Doing so will cause the ankle joint to tighten and limit its range of motion. If an athlete is experiencing knee, hip or back pain as well as any other muscle soreness in the lower body, they will instinctively limp or modify their movement to avoid discomfort. Bad posture (how often do you slouch when you’re sitting at your desk?) brings the body’s center of mass forward, which causes the ankle to plantarflex in an attempt to balance it out. This can be due to a tight joint capsule and/or scar tissue and adhesions in the joint from prior injuries or surgeries. Flexibility issues with the Gastroc/Soleus complex (muscles of the calf).Poor dorsiflexion can be attributed to a number of factors. This is crucial for correct body positioning and the efficient production and application of force. Now the reason why dorsiflexion is considered to be the most important of the degrees of freedom of the ankle is because it allows for the tibia (the shin) to move forward, relative to the position of the foot. This is when you lift the ball of the foot with the heel in contact with the ground as if you were pulling your foot upwards towards your knee.
![ankle mobility ankle mobility](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/31/30/f3/3130f37f0aa82f9a26f3ff0f3b2f08a6.png)
Dorsiflexion, as you might imagine, is it’s opposite. Plantarflexion is the movement or pointing of the toes downwards (like a ballerina going on to her tiptoes). There are two movements within this plane, plantarflexion and dorsiflexion. The ankle is a hinge joint and is only able to move (on its own) through one plane of motion-the sagittal plane. To learn why ankle mobility is so important in a squat (or any closed chain movement where the foot is in contact with the ground), we must learn more about dorsiflexion and how it relates to the ankle. But what about the ankles? You might scoff at the notion of spending time to work on the flexibility of the joint, but what if I told you that doing so would significantly help your squat, improve your strength and reduce the risk of injury? Now I’ve got your attention. When we think of mobility in CrossFit, we usually focus on our shoulders, traps, IT band, quadriceps-pretty much the entire posterior chain (which includes the glutes, hamstrings, posterior deltoids, and more).