#119 The 5 Big Rocks of Foot & Ankle Rehab

Welcome to the DGR Podcast. I'm your host, David Gray. Hey guys, David here. Welcome back to the DGR Podcast's episode number 119. I hope you're all doing well. I'm going to do a solo part today. We are going to discuss the five key things that you need to work on in photon ankle rehab. I haven't really talked about the title yet, but basically we're just back from America and we had lots of different questions and different conversations with coaches and therapists at our workshops and stuff like that. I think one big thing that I took away from those conversations and I learned probably more than anyone else in the real most of the time when we do our workshops and I try and become more and more clear on what people need to know because knowing like knowing everything is really cool and being being inquisitive about everything but understanding what the most important things are that you need to nail first is really important and for me as a teacher I really want to make sure to always focus on what the big elephants are and try to focus people's minds on those things first and foremost. And once they have understood and got a grasp of those things we can go further and further down the rabbit hole. But I think if you miss some of these things you're going to you're going to struggle. So I don't know what the title is but like basically there's five really important things in your photon ankle rehab are surrounding tissues if you want to say that like your calves or Achilles anything below the knee. Five important things you need to focus on this is taking away load management because that is a general thing that you always need to focus on so I'm not going to include that I'm not going to include psychosocial factors or anything like that I'm going to get very much into like this is photon ankle specific and I'm going to talk about those five key things and then there's a bonus sixth one at the end because that's what people do to make you listen to the end of the podcast so there will be a bonus. Sixth one at the end which is related but not necessarily directly related so I think this will be a really important episode for anyone with a photon ankle and anyone that works for with people that have a foot or an ankle. I guess a quick recap from your US trip 2025 so we were in New York for our workshop we had Kira came with us Mattie did not come with us Mattie had bought himself a ticket to come to America with us this time but when we flew to Portugal a few months ago within 10 minutes of that flight to Portugal Mattie's ticket got caught up got caught up got ripped and I've got shredded not. Just caught in half it got absolutely shredded so his ticket his invite got rescinded to America because of his antics on the plane to Portugal a few months back and to be honest he wasn't even that bad on the plane he was just we just we just didn't deal with it well so we're like I just looked at Kira and was like Mattie's not coming to America and she was like definitely not so locally Kira has an amazing family and an amazing. Sister that moved out to our house for a weekend and her daughter and her partner and her son and stuff they all chipped in and looked after him with my dad and his child monitor and everything so Mattie was delighted he had the best time ever so Kira was able to come to New York for a few days. Mimi came she was able to come and help us as teach there which was good and we had a great group there and it was genuinely our best workshop ever I probably say that every time and you know what I probably mean that every time because we trying constantly iterate on the workshop I think that there's I heard in a valve say something recently on Chris Williams Williams in podcast who actually met in Austin but I heard him say that it's not about Henry reps you do or. How many reps you do or how many hours you do because you hear people say it's the 10,000 hour rule or it's you have to get X amount of reps in to become a master at something and he said it's about it's not about reps or hours it's about iterations how many times does you you really think about the thing you're doing and try to improve on that thing not do something else but try to really improve on that thing and I think that's how you can really make progress very fast in our industry and every industry is constantly be iterating on what you're doing. And that's why I don't really automatically have respect for someone who's like oh I've been in the industry for 30 years like that what does that mean I know a lot of people that have been in the industry are working as a coach or a physio but they've just done the same thing for 30 years they learned it 30 years ago they use that for the first 12 months and then they just copy back to just repeated that over and over again so yeah we just try and iterate constantly on what we're doing and this workshop was much better than I was doing. The workshop was much better and I changed at least 30, 40 maybe 50% of the workshop I changed it. It's all the same stuff like the principles are the same it's all the same a lot of the same stuff the it's just stuff that previously I would have mentioned in passing in the workshop and kind of just presume that everyone would pick up on us. I built all of that into frameworks for people so that they could see it very clearly in front of the noise they can print it off they can study it and there's frameworks far the photo and ankle more so now then just having a general photo and ankle assessment and some progressions as like frameworks if they stand dash type of frameworks like if you see this type of thing try to do these type of things and it doesn't mean it's a it's a boy but it doesn't mean it's like you have to do this but it's and I don't want people to feel like they have to do this or this is the right answer I'm not giving them the answer I'm just giving them here's an example of what you could with this type of thing what you could do with this type of thing and so on and we have that for the foot and ankle we have that for the knee and we have that for the hip because it's a lower than workshop and I think people were feedback that I got was people were blown away by that and they were like Mimi said that we shouldn't give them that because it's worth the price at workshop alone never mind coming to the workshop just having that is worth the price at workshop I think maybe she's really spot we try and over deliver so New York was amazing we're in reload their beautiful gym and facility there in in Manhattan and we had really good fun then Kira went home Mimi went home and I went to Austin I really wanted to see Texas and I'm good friends with Tim Royley there so share it with Tim and he looked after me for a few days in Austin and I got to hang out he has an NFL group there that he trains some of those guys are pros and some of them are about to be drafted coming up so it was nice to get to kind of I was like an intern the first day with him I was I was picking up the barbell I was doing different things and then and then as the week went on I was able to get into the coaching mode a little bit more Tim was very much there coach but you know I was running a little corner as a station in the side and I was like not afraid to tell the guys hey dude it's dude that so I'm so that was brilliant Tim was very welcoming there I learned a lot I got to see how he runs that which was awesome and I got to hang out with some of those guys and lots of other people as well that's going on Tim's podcast coach him up so Austin was really cool and yeah I don't know Tim never if you're ever 50 50 about doing something for example moving to America don't meet Tim because you will be when you meet him you'll be 100% doing that thing even if your wife has yet to agree to that so yeah that's just Tim is good at convincing you to do stuff let's just say we're never even like directly doing that he just sets the volume and and makes an and you're in so from there I went to Boston I had to do a talk at Mike Boyles they do a spring seminar every year so Mike and Kevin had been had invited me there and yeah it was a bit nervous for that one there was 250 people in person which is the most I think the most I've ever spoken in front of I've spoken in front of big crowds before but I think that was the biggest so I was a little bit nervous coming into that but once I got going it was the same I was it was actually maybe even easier than one of our workshops to be honest I don't know I don't know because a lot of people probably didn't have a clue who I was or anything so yeah I just really let loose I just was messing around I was I was having fun with it so so that was brilliant I think that went really well as well as I could have expected to be honest and and it was really cool to see Mike Boyles facility and what they built there and the team I know some of the team I had spoken on a talk for their team before and we ran through some photo and ankle stuff and knee stuff before and it was really cool to see that because when you grow up in Ireland I think you think about strength and conditioning you you there's a few names that come to mind when you grow up there's Mike Boyle is definitely one of them probably the top of the list Joe DeFranco is another one Dan John is another one there's a few names like that and I don't know how it is in America are other countries but like for us Mike Boyle is is one of the big names and a lot of the top Irish strength and conditioning coaches would have went over to Mojica at some stage to intern or to work far him directly or whatever it is. So it was cool for me to be over there and be part of that and and hopefully do a good talk that people found useful and interesting and the feedback again was was really good. So yeah, that was our American trip and that was that was 2025. I think I'm going to be back or I am going to be back again in the States. I'm going to go to Oklahoma, but that's for a private workshop in August. So we have nothing as organized right now and our only other workshop is in July this year in London. So and that's so loud. So I think that's our workshops for 2025. They're just they're just I won't say difficult to organize. They just take time and we have a lot of other things to focus on right now. So I think public workshops right now that's that's that's probably going to be only two and then private ones. I'm always open to private ones with teams and organizations and stuff like that. If we can make it fit, we'll make it fit. So I have one of those to do in in August in Oklahoma. And I think that's it. I'm looking for another professional team to do one with on that trip. So if you are someone who is working with an NBA team or NFL team or something like that and you want to host me bring me in for a day or two days in August at some stage. I can I can we can chat and see if we can make that work. But if not, that's probably going to be it. So let's jump into the part. So five key things right? Photo and ankle. And this this goes for I think almost all of your photo and ankle issues. I'm not going to go into specific issues like ankle and pinchment or Achilles tendon opity or castrains or anything. This is just like the five key things you're you're going to have to make sure you have regardless of which of those problems you have. The first one and all of these are probably obvious, but I'm just going to lay them out as like here's a check mine when checklist in my mind when we have a client come in. Here is the checklist that I'm going through. First one and no particular order, but the first one really important, dorsiflexion range of motion. If you cannot drop your shin forward, it doesn't like you can do calf raises all day. You can build huge strong calves with a straight knee. And I recommend doing them with a straight knee for the most part. But like bent bent knee variations are not as good as straight knee variations. If you're just talking about building pure calf strength. But it's irrelevant. If you cannot drop your shin forward. So just because a lot of people say you should train calf strength with straight knee variations. If you can dorsiflex your ankle, because you can dorsiflex your ankle in a straight knee calf raise when you drop your heel to the floor, when you're on the edge of a step, you are going into ankle dorsiflexion. You're doing a calf raise going into ankle dorsiflexion, but that isn't how you move through the world. That isn't how you go in sprint. That isn't how you go and jump. That isn't how you go and walk even your heel is on the floor or your heel is off the floor. And what dorsiflexes you then is the ground, the mixture of get the ground and gravity and you're dropping your shin forward think about someone who has to drop their shin to get into an acceleration position. Their heel, it's not there, it's not there heel dropping away from to the ground. That might be happening. Your heel is dropping. But at the same time, your knee is bending and it's this shin dropping forward. That's the powerful position and people who can't do that are subject to just not being a good athlete, not being a good mover. I won't even say athlete. You can't even walk well if you didn't do that. So there is some research that you'll see that like every degree of dorsiflexion range of motion that you lose injury increases by 3% or potential for injury increases by 3% that is crazy. That one degree of dorsiflexion makes you that you lose makes you 3% more likely to be injured. Now look, that's just one study really. So you need to be careful with any one study or any I'm always I'm always a bit skeptical of specific numbers. But I think there is a very strong case to be made that you losing your ankle dorsiflexion over time are with one injury or whatever it is is makes you subject to moving much worse and potentially much more likely to get injured and that's that's what I have observed as well over and over again. We I did a consultation call online with a professional athlete yesterday and it was really good really good athlete and really good coach that was on the call with me and he was having pain was having like an impingement at the front of his ankle. And they were showing me talking about some of the numbers and talking about like how how he is the strongest out of their group of athletes at calf raises at eversion and inversion stuff. Check in like in different directions like Tibi Alice posterior and all of this stuff his feet are really strong it like it all of this stuff he's really really good. But he can't he's getting a lot of pain when he tries to drop his shin forward and this is what we needed to sort out and he went and showed me we did a kind of a general photo and ankle assessment. We looked at some of the movement there and then we dived deeper he wanted to show me the specific movements that he struggled with in his sport his sport requires him to do a lot of lunging and different things like this. Like short runs and being very reactive but also he has to sink into positions and launch in different ways. And he showed me the three positions that he struggles the most with specific to his sport. And I was like yep yep yep all of them. Like you don't have problems with these specific positions you have problems with ankle dorsiflexion you all of these positions require you to be able to drop your shin forward to get into a strong position here to then do what you need to be able to do. So we basically said I'm going to show you how to get your tailless moving your rear foot moving open up your mid foot and we did that. And genuinely within five I have the recording it is called within five minutes he was like that is the least pain and the most range I felt myself go through in however long he couldn't believe it even when he went for a walk afterwards he couldn't believe that he could bend his knee and to be honest his foot was just locked up and those guys had done everything right. Brilliant coaches brilliant athletes super smart. And it was just how he was trying to drop his shin he was doing it with so much tension and his foot and ankle was just jammed. So we got it unjammed and then the specific movements in his sport are going to be now I'm not saying that the session is is he's fixed or anything like that we might get into more specific stuff but we understood and agreed together that actually the specific problems that you are having when you play your sport is a general problem of you lacking ankle dorsiflexion here are having pain as you dorsiflex and we need to clean that up first and foremost and that will open many many doors and that is what we did. So the first one is ankle dorsiflexion I don't care who you are if you can't bring your knee forward you're going to you're going to be in trouble if you can't dorsiflex your ankle you're going to be in trouble in the clothes chain in the open chain you can sit there you can pull your toes back to your knee if you want to explain it in a like simple language with a straight knee and you can do that all day and you can talk better to be allis anterior strong and all of this stuff in the clothes chain when you land when you go and run when you go and walk when you're trying squat your foot is flat on the floor are your heel is off the floor but your shin has to drop and it's it's this shin dropping is that is what dorsiflex is your ankle rather than your tibialis trying to pull your toes back your toes aren't pulling back to your knee your knee is dropping forward to your toes and that's the that's what we need to be able to do in the clothes chain the universal ankle dorsiflexion I think you can get away with lacking some ranges at your hip at your spine at your shoulder at your neck I think people can compensate really well around that but they cannot compensate well around not being able to dorsiflex is a huge problem so ankle dorsiflexion hey guys just a very quick break from the show so that I can try to sell you our foot ankle anachilles program it shows you the exact approach that we use with our lower leg clients our foot or ankle clients anything below the knee basically here is what Nicholas had to say after nearly two years of failed rehab David's foot ankle anachilles program got me back into jumping pain free with easy to progress exercises it is exactly what athletes need to go from pain to performance we have received about a thousand testimonials like that I've gotten dozens every week since we released it here's what you may have to say the foot an ankle program is truly world class the detailed instructions in the video the structure of the workouts to progressions and literally everything about the program is amazing as a personal trainer of struggle to deal with foot and ankle problems and now I have many more tools that I can steal from the program in addition after only two weeks my shin splints have already been less painful during any plymetric or pick up basketball training session so two good reviews out of thousands that we could have chosen get lifetime access to the program will put it in the show notes and I don't think you regret it Most of the people listening to this podcast will have already got it, but there might be one or two of you that haven't yet So make sure you check it out. I promise you won't regret it The second one which I don't need to talk too much about but is Probably just as important is big toe extension Once you drop your shin forward you then have to be able to Roll over your toes. So it's all of your toe extensions toe extension of all of your toes, but I feel like you can certainly get away without little toe extension or Somebody other toes, but if you're took big toe cat extend at all You'll see you'll see varying reports and degrees of hell much somewhere between 40 degrees and 90 degrees depending on what you need to do I think it good like kind of standard even though there's no standard ranges of motion You'll see that like a good A good range of motion for ankle dorsi flexion might be 10 centimeters But I think some of that research is based on gymnasts or dancers or something like that But you just you'll know when someone has no range of motion or really lacking range of motion are when it's really Struggling versus the other side so on this side you have eight degree and On this this side you have eight centimeters of ankle dorsi flexion on The other side where you're having trouble you have two centimeters of ankle Dorsi flexion so big toe extension your talk and maybe 60 degrees But it really depends on who you are and what you need and again, I've had at least several athletes coming close to Actually, I had when I first started in this industry. I was working with a professional soccer player and he He got really bad advice after an injury and he ended up getting his His big toe joint the MTPJ joint fused When I didn't know him before that but like this had just happened a few months earlier and he was playing soccer at the time and he was like He was completely distraught over it. It was like I cannot play anymore He was still playing but he was like I think my career is over here And he he taught that like he had some range of motion. It was just in a little bit of pain He had enough to play he was just dealing with a bit of pain afterwards He was dealing with pain and he just couldn't sprint he couldn't do anything on that side I think it was a really bad decision. I don't know the ins and outs I wasn't privy to the conversations that happened but he just couldn't play he was he was done He was done. He was an international soccer player Footballer at that time. So he was done He really struggled after that and I've had several other orders since then where Everything is good except their big toe is really struggling and Like that that's a humongous problem and I think That's one of the one of the problems that I have sometimes with the like some of the pain science people And again, what every time I bring this up I'm not having a dig at pain science itself. I think the science is the most important thing to happen to our industry It's some of the people that try and communicate it and it leads some young physios and coaches to thinking that like how you move is a relevant Even though that's not what the science communicates at all and I say I kind of say to myself like if you saw this guy with With zero degrees of big toe extension who's career ended with it It's not in his head. He cannot move. He cannot push off that side Or if he does he has to like completely do something funny. So So how you move is relevant and certain joints are Irreplaceable. It's very difficult to compensate around them if you're in a certain sport So the second I think key that you need to look at far all of your foot and I and here's another example that I had a couple of months ago I had a younger guy who's had been having calf cramps for the last six months to the point where he can't train He can't play he's he's done all his nutrition stuff. He's got bloods He's done a like months and months of calf work and it hasn't improved and I looked at his feet And he had five degrees of big toe extension on either side and not just big toe, but his feet were so unbelievably tight And I said like look if you came to me and you hadn't done all of this stuff I would have sent you to do that stuff. I would have talked about your nutrition your hydration Bloods. I would have talked about um, I don't know like I don't know I wouldn't went to blood straight away or anything. I would have talked about calf strength I would have talked about load management stress all of this stuff But because you've seemed to have done a good job covering off all of that I cannot ignore that you can't lift your toes up at all You can't extend your toes at all and we worked on that and now he's improving a lot And it was so simple like so simple to start to improve that Uh, he was just wound up and so toys all true his calves but it's plantar fascia and his toes and it wasn't like a structural thing I don't think like because it improves within the session pretty quickly without us forcing anything we have like we have a section of our workshop and a section of our just how we work with athletes in general our workshop is just based off of What we do in clinic. So we have stuff called soft range And we separate that out from mobility mobility is more where we like kind of build strength through range of motion We have a soft range type of stuff which is moving gently into positions Um, and I often I love in gravity to do the work or it's it's a little bit more passive So We did a lot of soft range work on his toes and they opened up a lot. So um big toe extension humongously important far For a and I hate when people are like oh the big toe is the key to your glutes to building big glutes are The toe to glute connection and stuff like this. It's not about that It's it's just it's just it's just another area that you need to make sure is good And you don't need to get too mythical with it with like big toe to jaw big toe to shoulder big toe to glute You don't need to go too much into that side of things You just need to say you need to be able to extend your big toe and flex it but you can get away without flexion You cannot get away without extension because you're you're gonna really struggle to push off So first one dorsi flexion range of motion second one big toe extension really important And with any of your foot clients any of your ankle clients any of your calf your Achilles your shin your yeah Your knee clients as well like but let's just stick below the knee You should be checking this stuff regardless regardless of what they say they have or what they think their issue is Check it all don't pin it down to one of these things don't say oh you have an Achilles problem because of your big toe Or like I'm like I was just saying you have a glute problem because of your big toe do not get into that crap but just Look at big toe extension and improve that as well as the other stuff if they need to improve it The third one is planter flexor strength so calf strength plan well not just salay is in gastro because obviously other muscles in your lower leg can contribute To planter of the action and they all need to be strong but I guess the simplest exams examples are gonna be salay is in gastro and if you think about You're again varying stories you'll see varying people talk about stuff but in slow running You will see that there's up to seven times body weight going through your salay is in like when you're running like three meters per second Even all you can run three meters per second on a bad day so You you just you just cannot Tell someone that they're strong because they can do some single leg calf raises body weight calf raises are like they add five kilos in their hand and they're able to do three sets of 10 like that is so far from The loads that the calf is going to experience when you're going for a run Or even a walk to be honest The accumulated loads and even the peak forces they're no they're not even close are Are the rate of force development as you start to get quicker? So if you see you'll see some other stuff where there's maybe 15 times body weight going through some going through the The salay is in are going through the Achilles in Super high level tasks like triple jump or something like that So you need to be so incredibly strong through your plant reflexors and if you get someone who has Any of these things they're lacking dorsiflexion. They don't have big toe extension or they just have weak calves don't start going into nitpicking stuff and looking for weird things Just improve these simple things first and foremost and you're going to help a hell of a lot of people So if we think about strength we're just Yeah, let's just use the word bro very broadly because obviously strength can be broken down into different things So we're just going to say plant or flexor strength broadly enough speaking um and you need to be incredibly strong through your calves and I'm gonna that's basically all I'm gonna say About that I think the next thing is going to be plant or flexor endurance And I don't know if plant or flexor is the right word here It's probably better to say endurance like lower leg endurance. So it's not just your calf muscles. It's your foot and ankle Um It's your plant or fascia. It's you being able to handle loads again and again and again. For example, in five minutes of running, there's something like potentially you could have 500 foot contacts in five minutes of running. So 500 foot contacts and anyone who goes for a run, if you haven't ran for a few years and you go for a run, or if you have a run, but it's easiest usually to feel if your body hasn't been used to it. If you go for a run, the limiting factor is not going to be, but you do a five K after not running for two years. It's your feet that are going to be sore. It's your plant or fascia. Obviously, everyone would be different, but generally speaking, it's your feet and your ankles and your calves and your shins that get beat up and your knees that get beat up. There's four times your body weight going through your quads, even in slow running. So it's from the knee down that gets beaten up. And it's not going to be, you're not going to wake up the next day and you can't walk with loot doms. Like you've been doing heavy, heavy, or the Ls or something like that. It's your lower leg and your feet that get beat up. And that's because if you combine the last two points, the amount of load going through your lower leg and then the amount of foot contacts, even in five, 10, 15, 20 minutes of running, it's astronomical. And if you multiply those things together, you're getting to humongous numbers that you cannot really match in the gym or the weight room, just doing some body weight calf raises, for example. So you could have, and this could be part of your assessment, but to be honest here, like we've talked about dorsiflexion range of motion, you could do a knee to wall test for that. Big toe extension, you could look at it passively on the table where you look at their toe, you could ask them to lift their toes up, you could ask them to do a calf raise where they're leaning forward, you could ask them to tuck their toes underneath them, when they're sitting on the floor and sit back under heels, where you're gonna have big toe extension there. So you could check easily dorsiflexion range of motion, you can check easily big toe extension, plantar flexion strength, obviously having a force plate there would potentially be best, or a dynamometer or something like that, but you could do a five rep max of a calf raise or something there. Injurance, you could test, you could test a calf capacity test of a video on my YouTube, a calf capacity test where you set up and see how many single leg calf raises that they can do with a metronome, with a certain beat per minute. And you obviously want to standardize the test, but you can compare that with right versus left, and then compare it with normative values, which you'll see different types of studies talking about the normative values, depending on how they set up the test. One test, one study, I don't have the name of it now, I think it might have been a visor from this year, or maybe it was a previous test, but they had like a 10 degree decline board that they did the test on 60 beats per minute and people were going to be, I don't know, like you were looking for over 25 reps, which I don't even think is good enough for a lot of the population that we work with, I think I would like it to be much higher. So you could test endurance there, or you could test endurance with something like a side to side hop or a single leg pogo where they go for 30 seconds. And 30 seconds doesn't sound long until you do a very difficult side to side single leg hop, and our just a 30 second pogo, single leg pogo, and 30 seconds can be a long time. And you know what, you don't need it to be, this is what I say at our workshops as well. Like someone was asking about, when we did a side to side hop test in our New York workshop, someone was asking about, "What am I supposed to see here in this test?" And I had gone through the test and then I had gone around the room and one of the guys there showed me his, I think it was his, let's say his good side quote unquote, he was able to do whatever it was, like 40 reps or something, for example, on his good side, and then he showed me his bad side, and he couldn't, he could do five reps, he couldn't, he had to like stop in between every single rep and reset, he couldn't, he wasn't, he couldn't put it together. Now, I don't think this is an endurance problem, to be honest, actually I'm certain it wasn't an endurance problem, it was a mix of strength and reactivity, but actually I would start very simply with him and say, I think I'm pretty sure that you have a strength problem on this side to begin with and a reactivity problem, and then we can train endurance on top of that, but what are you gonna see in that test is, you're gonna see people who have had injuries on one side or are currently injured on that side, like do 10 reps on one side and 50 plus reps on the other side, so it's gonna be an obvious problem here, not like, oh there one rep in the difference, it's gonna be a hugely obvious problem, are there just crap on both sides? So, now we have dorsiflexion range of motion, big toe extension, plantar flexor strength, strength is broadly speaking, endurance, again, broadly speaking because obviously there's a huge crossover between these two things, so endurance you could measure with like a calf capacity test, you can measure with a run I guess, couldn't you? You're trying to, these are not completely separate variables, but for the purpose of a conversation, it's nice to separate out like, okay, strength we're thinking about like one rep max or our peak force or something like that, endurance can you repeat this over and over again? And then the last one, the fifth one is gonna be reactivity, it's gonna be reactive strength, so you can easily test this with something like a pogo, a single leg drop jump or something where you're gonna be measuring contact time, reactive strength index, you can see different indexes there and stuff like that. So, reactivity is obviously so important because a lot of these injuries are happening if you take an ACL or something like that, you're talking about milliseconds, you're talking about a lot of the problems are happening before the foot hits the floor because, as you get up to sport and agility and you're dealing with another body and a ball potentially and all of these scenarios and different surfaces, then you have to be so incredibly accurate with your movement. As time goes down, get smaller and smaller and smaller, so contact time and as your speed of movement increases, then most of the time your force is going to increase, so you're dealing with more force, you have to apply more force in a short or period of time and not only that, you have to be even more accurate with your movement at that stage because now I have such a short period of time to produce so much force and I have to place my foot in the exact right spot because I'm trying to change direction, I'm trying to tackle someone, I'm trying to, whatever it is, get there in front of the ball or whatever it is, so you have to be so accurate with your movement, you have to be so fast with your movement and fast is what we see in terms of, oh, you move your foot so quickly, but fast is also how quickly could you build tension in your muscles and co-contract and have the right amount of tension and pre-activation before your foot hits the floor? Accuracy is not just to deal with the foot, it's to deal with the hip, the knee, the trunk control, a million other things, your eyes, there's so much involved in being accurate, being strong, being reactive and then endurance comes in, being able to do that in the case of a soccer game over 90 minutes, for example. So those are the five, if you wanted to test reactivity you could again test something like a single leg drop jump. Yeah, and check contact time, check, get their reactive strength index. So those are the five, there's obviously big crossover if someone is not reactive at all, do you need to train reactivity maybe, but like if they can't do a calf raise, then obviously the first thing is, let's build some strength here. If they can do all of those things, which is like the guy that I spoke about, the athlete that I was working with yesterday, who asked the lunge and all of that stuff, he had reactivity, he had endurance, he had strength, he had big toe extension, but he couldn't, he couldn't dorsiflex without a lot of pain. And when you, when he couldn't dorsiflex without a lot of pain, that meant he didn't dorsiflex. So if he effectively, like his range of motion wasn't particularly useful to him because he was trying to avoid it every step and every every, every time he played his sport. So it really depends on, you might need to, you do need to look at them all and discuss them all and figure out what the limiting factor is. You do need to have them all, but you might not need to work on them all. You might only need to work on the one or two most important things and sometimes, sometimes one or two of those things could raise all the other boats if that is the right, if that is the right saying, I'm not sure. So right, dorsiflex and range of motion, and there's obviously more like planter flexion, range of motion is another one. Meat force range. range of motion, range of motion at the individual joints. But, and within dorsiflexion we can dive deeper into pronation and eversion of the rear foot. And within, within big toe extension we can look at how the mid foot moves and loads and void they're not dorsiflexing, our void are not extending their big toe. Is it because they can't pronate their foot and get to the inside of their foot and so on? Within each of these things we can dive so much deeper and we should, we should as coaches and clinicians be able to dive much deeper but I'm just broadly speaking about these things and saying that how important each of these individual things are and take them on kind of surface level first if you need to which is don't worry about pronation just think about dorsiflexion to begin with and you will be good. Then you might need to think about okay like I did with this at least, okay, why is he not able to dorsiflex? Actually, it's because his rear foot and his mid foot was so stuck, he was using so much tension and he was getting a block at the front of his ankle so that's when we went into more of the foot mechanics behind dorsiflexion. So you definitely can and should be able to go deeper but broadly and top line speaking dorsiflexion range motion, big toe extension, plant reflection strength endurance and then I won't just say plant reflection endurance, it's for an ankle endurance but you can just test calf capacity if you want and endurance and then reactivity. Five really important things. Bonus number six what time is it? As I call in a couple of minutes. Bonus number six is going to be having a healthy knee joint and an off quad strength. I don't even want to say an off quad strength, just having a healthy knee joint. I've seen a lot of people that will not dorsiflex and do a lot of the things that I described the ball and it's because they don't want to bend their knee in the first place. So that is bonus number six is being able to bend your knee because dropping your shin in the closed chain again, you can dorsiflex in the open chain, you can do a calf raise, single leg calf raise and go into dorsiflexion. You can do it sitting down where you pull your toes back but that doesn't involve knee flexion. You don't have to drop your shin forward, you just use your tibialis anterior to pull your toes back. So dorsiflexion range of motion in the closed chain is really about dropping, is really about flexing your knee and ankle together. So really, really important that you travel up the chain and look at other things as well but for the part and that could come up to hip flexion as well. It doesn't flex their hip well so they don't really flex anything in the lower leg well or anything in the lower limb well at all. So those are the five plus the bonus six one is having a healthy knee and quad strength. We want better athletes can usually drop their shin deeper and deeper and deeper and yeah, you do need a decent bit of quad strength and reactivity there to be able to get into those deep, deep positions like it's disgusting. We train people a lot down there and it's disgusting and there's a lot of demand on your dorsiflexion range of motion, your big toe, your plant reflexors and your quads as well of course. So those are the six. Let me know what you think of the podcast and be really good and yeah, check out our Futter and Ankel and Killie's program and I will chat to you guys soon.