This Movement Disappears Fast After 60 (Unless You Train It)

Will Harlow, the over-50s specialist physio, shows us the easy way to keep this important bit of mobility:

Best foot forward (and then your other one)

Remember the “ankle to wall” test from the other day’s video: Can You Pass These 5 Mobility Tests?

Ankle dorsiflexion (as such the movement in question is called) is essential for walking, squatting, and stair descent, yet more than 50% of people over 60 lose much of their range of motion in this regard.

It’s not an inevitability of age, though; this loss of dorsiflexion usually comes from a combination of joint stiffness, calf muscle tightness, and weakness in the tibialis anterior muscle.

Here are three ways to combat that, so take your pick:

• Chair mobilization: place your foot flat on a chair, keep your heel down, move your knee forwards over your toes until your heel almost lifts, then rhythmically move slightly in and out of that limit to mobilize the joint.
• Calf stretch: place your hands on a wall, extend one leg behind you with your foot flat and facing forwards, bend your front knee until you feel a moderate stretch in your calf, and hold it.
• Tibial raise: stand with your shoulders and your butt against a wall, place your feet slightly away from it, then lift your toes towards your shins, and slowly lower them back down, to strengthen your tibialis anterior*.

*Which is a lot more important than most people realize, because it impacts things some way from it; see our “learn more section” for more on this!

In any case, consistent mobility, stretching, and strengthening can significantly improve dorsiflexion within a few weeks, with one study (linked in the video) reporting an average gain of 12° after a six-week program in older women:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

What Nobody Teaches You About Strengthening Your Knees ← about that tibialis anterior muscle and what it means for your knees

Take care!