On the other hand, the preservation or conservation of joint range is important and must be guarded carefully, as cascades of injury could happen when athletes are “not themselves.” What Is Ankle Mobility Scientifically? Even if you can actually make a difference, it’s just wishful to think you will see dramatic changes in performance and injury rates from mobility training. In short, restore what nature has given your athletes, but don’t blindly run in and add exercises.
I know some programs really do a nice job developing joint range of motion, but those programs are usually conventional and use heavy strength training and manual therapy, not a few corrective exercises at the end of a workout. I believe some of the videos have merit, but I am not convinced of an exercise’s benefit unless the evangelist has data to back up their claimed changes. I also devote one section to the marketing hype of ankle mobility, and I want to make sure we are constructive and not just critical.
Evaluating intervention strength to see if anything is worth adding to a program.
This article makes the simple case that athletes who do have a need to restore their natural range of motion should invest in sound therapies, and those with no issues or room left to move should continue to skip the endless drills and use weight-bearing exercises with full range to maintain what they have. Most mobility exercises are underpowered or simply only appropriate for injuries, not for healthy athletes who have maxed out their anatomy, explains Click To Tweet Again, ankle mobility matters, but the unfortunate reality is that many corrective exercises waste time and give false hope to athletes. In this article, I will cover the details of ankle mobility, and review what potentially works and what might just hemorrhage time from training. Most mobility exercises are underpowered or simply only appropriate for injuries, not for healthy athletes who have maxed out their anatomy. I want to make myself perfectly clear: I do value ankle range of motion and I actively respect efforts to restore it, but many of the drills we see in instructional videos are clickbait or misinformation.
It’s perfectly natural to find unpleasant the notion that some things we do on a daily basis don’t work, but for us to make progress, we need to look honestly at the topic and ask the tough questions. It may be uncomfortable to admit that ankle mobility is strongly tied to genetics, but we need to embrace the evidence and logic that is available today. If I had to pick one of the least efficient training approaches to improving athletes, it would be working on ankle mobility to increase dorsiflexion.