get strong: overcome calf injury with exercise

Check out the video below or read on for a few key variations of a calf raise exercise.

Useful for foot, ankle, and knee rehab as well. We know that strength training is really important in these rehab areas

“if you can do more than 10 to 12 reps of an exercise, it's probably a bit too easy for you”

I'm going to go through a few quick and easy variations of the calf raise and feel free to try some of these at home.

What can i do?

Double leg calf raise exercise

This is kind the of stock standard.

Facing onto the wall, come up and down onto your toes, making sure you have nice amount of weight bearing through your big and little toe, making sure that you're coming up as high as we can.

can i make that more effective?

Yes!

If we're wanting to make that a little bit harder, firstly go up with two feet, then transfer the weight onto one leg and come down on one leg.

So that's kind of halfway between our double leg calf raise and a single leg calf raise.

still too easy?

If we're wanting a challenge try doing the calf raise just on one leg.

If we stand you onto one leg straight away, rising stionto the toes, you can see that that's working harder on one leg.

This is also challenging balance a bit further there as well.

Rehab areas?

To get a larger ankle range of movement, we're going to have a look at some calf raises on a step as well.

Simply come up onto a step - you're going to put your forefoot on, and then you can hang your heels off the back.

From there, you are lowering the heels to below the height of the step, and then raise it all the way up onto the toes from there.

So we're working through a larger range of movement at the ankle and challenging those calves in a different way from there.

are you underdosing?

Lastly, if we're wanting to challenge the feet and ankle and calves a little bit further, we can also add load.

Adding a couple of weights to hold onto, will challenge the calves a bit further by increasing the amount of load he has to lift.

Remember, if you can do more than 12 at the end of the third rep, then you can add more weight.

If you don’t add the weight as you get stronger then it’s like having a medicine but only half the dose…not enough!

Make sure you are progressing your exercises to get the best outcomes, and commit for at lease 6-8 weeks 2-4x/week

As always, I look forward to hearing from you and always keen to give more tips!

Simply call 089409 2277 for an appointment or head over to our booking page .

All the best

Annissa