Tight Calves? Licensed Massage Therapist, Brian shows you how to layer self-myofascial release for a more effective treatment.
Hey everybody. This is Coach Brian with Sand & Steel Fitness. I’m a fitness senior coach and licensed massage therapist.
I’m here today to talk a little bit about mobility with the lower leg. So one thing I see a lot of people do when they’re doing lower leg mobility is they’ll start off with something really aggressive like a kettlebell calf.
Generally speaking, we have so many different layers of tissue on the back of the leg here. If I start off with something really aggressive, it’s probably gonna cause me to create more tension to protect myself and it’s gonna make my mobility less effective. So what I’m gonna do to do is begin with. Cuz I wanna take something soft like the soft roller here and I wanna get working my calf against the roller now if I’m really tight and there’s a lot of pressure and resistance here at this level, I don’t necessarily wanna go any more than this until it relaxes.
Once the calf relaxes, I might increase the pressure by myself, bring my hips off the floor, or crossing my opposite leg over the top of the shin. So that way I’m getting more pressure on the roller and into the calf. Once I’ve loosened up the calf this way, then I like to tie. It goes into a little bit deeper the primer like a harder roller here and then as I find I can tolerate this morning.
It’s less pain. I can see that I’m getting deeper and deeper into the tissue layers or if I know there’s a real stubborn part, that’s when I might decide to bring in the kettlebell for the calf snatch but again, this is gonna be the very last thing that I do. So again when you’re starting and doing your mobility think you wanna go softer. You don’t want to shock the muscle. Shocking the muscle causes it to tense up further and you gradually release the tension in the muscle fibers.