Tight Calves? Tips To Stretch Your Calves

All right. Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Stephen Dunn with CORE Therapy & Pilates, and today I want to go over a quick little demonstration, a couple quick tips on how to loosen up your calves.

I had two guys over the last week that had these really, really tight calves. One was a strain with playing tennis at a high level of tennis. And another was a strain from going out hiking. And with these guys, both of them had strained their calves and they were trying some traditional, like the runner stretch, at the wall, stretching that calf out. And it just wasn’t doing anything for them. It wasn’t helping them out.

So I showed them this little tip. It’s been about a week since I showed these guys this, and they both came back and reported tremendous improvements just from being consistent with this.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to use a lacrosse ball or a tennis ball. I’m gonna use a lacrosse ball just because I know, for the weight of my leg, the tennis ball’s not really as effective. And what we’re doing here is we’re going to put the ball right underneath your calf.

Now, when I put that pressure down onto the calf, I feel that, but I don’t feel it a whole lot because there’s not enough weight, there’s not enough leverage here. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this little yoga block, and if you don’t have a yoga block at home, you can use a phone book or a book, any kind of book. I’m sure phone books aren’t around anymore. Maybe an encyclopedia. Are those around anymore? Probably not either. A book. A yoga block works great.

But what I’ve done is I’ve just lifted that foot, and by lifting that leg up and putting the ball and then the yoga block, and my leg on top of those two things, now I have a tremendous amount of pressure where that ball is. And I can do a little bit of motion with my foot back and forth. I can do a circular motion with my foot. Or I can do what we call the ankle alphabet, A, B, C, D, and so on and so forth.

And then another option is just to kind of move back and forth like this, or side to side like this, to find that spot that’s the most uncomfortable, the most tender. And once you find that spot, you can dig in and use the ankle pumps and circles and what not. For me, right here on the outside of my calf is a little tighter than the inside. So you’ll just play around with that and find what works best for you. And be consistent with that for I would say about up to a week where you’re doing it right before you go do your exercise, doing it right before you go do your cardio, right before you go do your tennis, golf, whatever it is you’re doing.

All right, that’s what we got for you today. And if you have any comments or questions, put them below and I’ll make sure to get them and answer them and get back to you. And if you would like to have someone take a look at you and have a little bit more… take a look at that calf more than just doing that, because both of these guys needed some work done in their hip and knee as well, then give us a call… 512-215-4227.

We can set up one of our free discovery sessions where we can take a look at you, do an evaluation, and determine if we have a plan of care that would be appropriate for your problem and your goals.

So reach out, and we look forward to hearing from you. Take care.

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