Big Toe and Ankle Mobility to Boost Your Athleticism

The foot and ankle are two of the most overlooked areas when it comes to improving your athletic potential. We see athletes every week that present with mobility deficits at the big toe and ankle. These patients typically spend most of their day wearing stiff-soled shoes or trudging around in slides causing a long-term change in mobility. Lacking mobility in these areas decreases your potential to load and explode like a spring during jumping, sprinting, or cutting. Improving mobility in these areas will help you to squat lower, run faster, and jump higher via the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC). 

Big Toe and Ankle Mobility to Boost Your Athleticism

Spring Loaded Achilles Tendon

The SSC is an active pre-stretch of a muscle group followed by the immediate shortening of the same muscle group during plyometric exercises. Think of the SSC as a spring. The more ankle and toe mobility you have, the more you can load the spring, and the further/faster the spring will jump. 

Big Toe and Ankle Mobility to Boost Your Athleticism

How Does Big Toe Mobility Affect Athletic Performance?

Sprints

Decreased mobility at your first toe can limit your push-off during jogging and running. The kinetic chain links the joints of the body together to maximize movement efficiency. When you are lacking mobility at one of the links in the chain, the other links have to compensate for the weakest one. Optimal great toe extension would allow for at least 70-90 degrees of extension during toe-off position of gait cycle. If you are lacking mobility at the big toe, you’re likely to compensate at a few different areas, such as hyperextending through your spine, lacking triple extension at the ankle/knee/hip, collapsing your knee into valgus, or collapsing the arch of your foot. Lacking great toe extension also limited full hip extension causing the glute to not activate as powerfully as capable. All of these examples of compensatory patterns can cause chronic injuries at the plantar fascia, achilles tendon, patellar tendon, hip flexors, or low back. A lack of great toe mobility can contribute to decreased ability to access the stretch-shortening cycle and decreased force production. Great toe mobility is crucial to improve your performance and ensure your body can produce adequate force into the ground without compensation. 

How Does Ankle Mobility Affect Athletic Performance?

Adequate ankle mobility is essential to be able to load the achilles tendon like a spring when accelerating horizontally during sprinting, or vertically during jumping. Lacking mobility at the ankle creates a natural braking force during running which will cause you to move slower and decrease your rate of force production. We assess ankle mobility with the ½ kneeling dorsiflexion test. This is conducted with the patient facing the wall in a ½ kneeling position. The patient needs to drive their knee forward to touch the wall. We are looking to measure how far away from the wall a patient can get while maintaining their heel on the ground. Ideally, we are looking for at least 4-5 inches away from the wall without deviation or pain. This will allow for a positive shin angle (knees over toes) during acceleration to allow for increased horizontal force production during sprinting. Increasing the angles of triple flexion will improve the ability to load the SSC at the hip, knee, and ankle, resulting in improved explosive power when transferring into triple extension. 

Big Toe and Ankle Mobility to Boost Your Athleticism

Run Faster, Jump Higher

The more force you can put into the ground during sprinting the faster you will be. As physical therapists, we can identify mobility deficits in these areas and utilize manual therapy to mobilize the joints. As you achieve greater toe and ankle mobility you will be able to create more horizontal force production due to improved toe-off and positive shin angle created during the acceleration phase. Below are examples of exercises that will also help to improve your toe and ankle mobility. These are progressing in difficulty starting from easiest to hardest. These exercises are designed to improve your mobility at an isolated joint first, then progressively increase the load or speed into the proper movement pattern. Our role is to provide individualized coaching cues to ensure proper mobility, strength, coordination, and movement patterns occur to optimize your performance. Ideally, this will transfer to an improved ability to load the SSC and result in increased force production during sprinting. Look out for my next blog which will continue on this topic, but with more of a focus on plyometric training to improve your vertical jump. 

Big Toe and Ankle Mobility to Boost Your Athleticism

Here Are a Few Examples of Functional Movements To Work on Proper Mechanics:

Self-Mobilization:

  • Knee to Wall Ankle Mobilization
  • Toes-Elevated Knee to Wall Ankle Mobilization
  • Quadruped Great Toe Extension Mobilization

Dynamic Single Leg Strength/Stability, and Ankle/Toe Mobility:

  • Split Squats
  • Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squats
  • Reverse Lunge to Forward Lunge Complex
  • Single Limb Skater Squat

Sprint Mechanics:

  • Wall Marching
  • High Knees
  • High Knee Skips
  • Power Skips
  • Prowler Sled March
  • Rapid Deceleration

Sprint Drills: 

  • Prowler Sled Sprint
  • Face Down Start to Sprint
Face Down Sprint
  • Fwd Lean Fall Start to Sprint
Lean Sprint
  • ½ Kneel Start to Sprint
1/2 Kneel Sprint
  • Split Stance Start to Sprint
Split Sprint

If you are training for competition, involved in Miami athletics, training for a race, or would just like to become a more functional athlete, feel free to book an appointment with our physical therapists to go through a full physical therapy assessment and create a treatment plan to maximize your athletic potential.