Paul Zaichik – Easy Flexibility – Foot and Ankle Flexibility

Flexibility of the lower leg is often overlooked. Most athletes don’t go much past the standard calve stretches. Dance and ballet schools go deeper and include various foot, ankle, and toes exercises and also front of the lower leg stretches, which still don’t work or are very slow to produce results for many people.

In reality any athlete can become more mobile and agile with increased flexibility of the lower leg muscles and joints. While this applies mostly to skills which involve ground reaction forces, others can benefit as well.

For example martial artists with foot position for kicks (plantar flexion for the roundhouse kick or dorsi flexion for the side kick), dance foot position (dorsi flexion in plie and plantar flexion in pointe), etc.

Many power lifters, olympic lifters and bodybuilders are able to get deeper into the squats and with proper form, as the results of better ankle flexibility.

Like all the other Zaichik Stretching programs, this Foot and Ankle Strength and Flexibility program takes each movement apart into all the participating muscles for the movements of the foot. There are various muscles that points the toes and pulls them in. Each one is worked on individually.