I brought Walter through an ankle Mobility series and his transformation was insane so deian and I flew Walter in from Dublin to our hometown Winnipeg and we wanted to expedite his transformation now he's been focusing on his feet primarily every single day but also his full body and his transformation has already been incredible but we really wanted to take that to the next level so it my focus was was on his angle mobility and this guy trains in the gym not to mention he 73 years old he was a rugby player so he's riddled with injuries adhesions trauma and what we are able to bring him through in this one session was mindblowing if his ankles transformed this much in one session so can yours we started off with a dorsy flexion ankle Mobility test classically going up against the wall and seeing how much your knee can track over your toes what we did was a combination of fashy compression which is block therapy in and around his ankles and his feet with a combination of strength and Mobility exercises but now what I want to break down is there's two main postures that contribute to poor ankle Mobility one common posture can be your hips externally rotate your knees externally rotate your tibia and even your feet so you actually have too much weight on the lateral portion of your feet causing a really high arch in the foot but more commonly is the second scenario where we internally rotate at the hips our knees will adduct so coming closer together but then the tip IIA will externally rotate but then we have a collapsed Arch and then our feet tend to externally rotate like a duck and generally you have a lot of your weight if not majority of your weight on the balls of your feet primarily your big toe and then over time that can actually develop into bunions so what we actually need to do is start focusing on the feet to begin with and then we can start working in and around the ankles and really progress with that ankle dorsy flexion in this video we use our blocks from block therapy so that's what I'm showing with Walter however for the fast de compression component you can just use a rolled up towel as the tool for fasty compression and then all you really need is your body weight to perform all of these strengthening and Mobility exercises so here's Walter and let's get started with the angle Mobility series I got Walter here with us he came in from Dublin and Walter had massive success by working on your feet all the way up the chain into your shoulders your neck your head and there's an amazing discussion that Dan and Walter did on our YouTube channel um I'll link to this so that you can check it out we're going to do the dorsy flexion Mobility test and let's get started really all you need is of course a wall and if you have a measuring tape that's great just so that you can gauge how much range of motion you're gaining with your dorsy flexion as you perform these routines and even this complete series so starting with Walter's left ankle we could see that his knee would track over his toes 1.5 in and then we repeated this on the right side and we noticed that he had a little bit more dorsy flexion with his right ankle than his left he had about 1.75 in on the right side meaning that he has about a quar inch more dorsy flexion on his right ankle than his left ankle we're going to now perform the routine with Walter and we're going to revisit this at the end and see if we made any improvements okay all right let's get started the first block therapy position we're going to be doing is the bottom of the feet and we're going to be starting on that left foot so Walter nice and slow y let's bring your left foot and you can do this up against the wall we're just doing this on a half rack squat rack here for a majority of you using your body weight and gravity is definitely going to be enough pressure however Walter here is using his right foot he's kind of drilling that into his left but this is going to get nice and deep within the planter FAS within the feet to help create that release but make sure that you're breathing in and out through your nose you're never restricting or holding your breath and you're making these small intricate movements to slowly get a little bit deeper into your feet so that we can release more of the adhesion stored within the connective tissue so now Walter's going to perform this on the right foot you perform this on the right foot as well and then we're going to be doing the follow-up exercise that's going to be complimenting this block therapy position the first thing I want you to do is slowly bend the knees and they're tracking directly over your second toe and then when you're ready nice and slow bring the heels directly off of the floor or the platform and as you're doing this keep those knees bent we don't want to straighten the knees just like as you see Walter's doing here then an extremely important Point here which is the whole point of this exercise is really grip your toes into the floor into the platform we want to start strengthening the feet it's going to feel awkward you might start shaking you might start shaking quite vigorously and that's okay that even happens to me at times as well for the second routine we're going to be starting off with a position a block therapy position on the anterior tibialis which is this fairly large muscle just on the lateral portion of your tibia first off Walter is showing the single block version or of course you can use a rolled up towel directly on the interior tibialis so this is if you're on your left side just left of that shin bone and you can see he bent his right leg to his side just for that stability and support and the next variation is having a block directly over top of the Achilles and at the gluteal fold and then the second block or the second towel will be positioned again on that same area on the an anterior tibialis and this can be higher or lower wherever you prefer to work and you want to make sure that your breath is your guide you're not rushing or forcing this position and you want to spend a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes here take your time as you get out here let's exhale up again we're going to repeat this position on the other side and just for the sake of timing of this video um do that position now we're going to be doing this off camera and then we're going to be jumping into the exercise following this position now for the exercise we're going to be focusing primarily exactly where we worked which is the interior tibialis and there's quite a few different exercises that you can do but something that every body can do without any equipment is all you need is a wall so Walter I'm going to have you about yeah about a foot distance away from the wall and just lean into it like that and all we're focusing on doing here is raising the feet up towards the ceiling just like that so we're going to get into a nice flow here where we're going to be exhaling nice and slow on the way up and then we're going to be inhaling nice and slow on the way down Walter we're going to get started in three two one and nice and slow exhale up inhale down perfect so don't get frustrated if you can't bring your feet that high off of the floor again the further you stand away from the wall typically it will be a little bit easier you'll have more leverage the closer you get to the wall will be more challenging and again perform these nice and slow feel that interior Tibi Alis engaging because that's what you're going to want to be feeling this is going to be helping with with the ankles but also with the knees that completes routine number two we'll see you in the third routine to start off the third routine we're going to be doing the classic calf position now there's two different ways of approaching this Walter's going to be doing this one kneeling on the Block which will look like this and again you can have this high up or lower down towards the calf alternatively again using either the buddy or the baby you can just position it like this and just bring your right leg over top of the left and you can sech from here so starting on the left side position the towel or the block quite high up if you can in the crevice of the knee if not again you can work any lengthier that you want Walter has his right leg bent to his side just for that stability and then nice and slowly apply your pressure directly over top of the block and you're going to really feel that pressure build up into the calf you may also feel this in the hamstring but this is lengthening the ankle this is going to be releasing the calf unlocking these adhesions which is significantly going to help with the dorsy flexion again make sure that you spend a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes here it's going to be painful the calvs store a lot of pain in tension so if you need to you can definitely spend more time here nice and slow let's exhale up and off and then we're going to have Walter off camera perform that exact same position on the other side so make sure that you swap to the other side spend again anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes and then we'll see you in the exercise portion of this routine so now we're jumping into the exercise component here and Walter's already ready to jump in here so what we're trying to do and accomplish with this exercise is we want to bring that left leg out to the side like Walter is showing here and then the point is tracking that knee over the toes we want to create more dors deflection more Mobility we just created a lot of release we strengthened certain areas and let's bring that left forearm over top of your thigh over top of the knee and start leaning in we want to trace and track that knee over the second toe but make sure you don't lose contact with those three points of the foot and as you're here make sure you're breathing hold this area for three to five breaths and then once you've held that you can release and come back and then you can approach this position again now let's come back into that area where we're bringing the knees over the toes let's hold that area for 3 to five breaths and then let's come back and release so you can perform that a few times three to five times and this is going to help force a little bit more of that dorsy flexion so that you can improve that range of motion that wraps up routine number three we'll see you in routine number four we're going to be starting with the blocking portion here and we're going to be working on the inside of the ankle joint so we're going to start with that left side Walter will have you facing this way and again you can use your block buddy or your block baby I know Walter will be using the block buddy for this one and this is going to be directly under the ankle joint just like that once you have the block or you have the roll up towel underneath the ankle just like you can see Walter doing here you can bring that right foot directly over top of the left Achilles and then just slowly start settling in kind of surrendering to the pain in this area and connecting to your breath and then as you settle in you can slowly search to the left or to the right searching for those areas of pain restriction and adhesion but you got to make sure you're breathing through those areas is and you're going to notice that Walter here was getting very deep this was a significantly important position for Walter and I really believe that this position alone helped contribute his ankle dorsy flexion and really take that to the next level with this with this position of course we're going to be doing this on the right side as well so we're going to have Walter finish up this position we're going to be doing this on the right side and then we got a diff quite a different exercise that we're going to be doing um compared to what we were doing earlier in this series to really bring this all together it can be a little bit more intense I'm looking forward to showing you that exercise and we'll get started right away for this exercise we're going to be doing a slight variation of a split squat now this is definitely more of an advanced movement that's also why I'm having it part of the fourth routine if we're going to be doing a split split Squat and for example this is just what a split squat will look like if we're going to be doing a split squat with your left foot forwards I'm going to have a weight in my left hand now this is a 5B weight you can use something lighter or you can use something heavier of course also as an alternative you can do this Ste up about a few inches high keeping that weight in your left hand and then you're going to be performing the split squat like this so now Walter is in that proper starting stance and alignment and nice and slow as he's coming down again we don't have to focus on depth I really want him to focus on pushing through that Arch that is so crucial here because we need to regain that Arch regain the foot muscle so that we're not collapse we got to strengthen this area but this exercise really brings it all together it gets the knees involved the hips the glutes the quads you name it and him performing this exercise with eight to 10 repetitions on each side for doing three sets approximately is fantastic and he's noticed a big change with this exercise so again make sure that the knee tracks over that second toe you're using your breath as your guide and again only get as low as what feels comfortable you can slowly gain more range of motion as you progress amazing how did that feel good uh more stable the more reps you do the more stable and more comfortable you get okay um and my ankles are all over the place yeah yeah well you had huge releases before we even did this you did amazing with this routine thank you so much for joining me in doing this we're going to be revisiting the dorsy flexion Mobility test I'm very excited to see if we've made any improvements and again we're doing this all in one day so we're going to see after about working together for hour and a half two hours if we've made any improvements when we measured Walter's dorsy flexion after we did the routines we noticed that he gained one full inch with his left foot and then we measured this on the right side and we notice that he gained about 75 in meaning that in total he is about 2.5 in of dorsy flexion on his right ankle so really that means that his ankles now are symmetrical which is absolutely incredible and that was the goal and something that we wanted to accomplish this is obviously a longer routine but you can pick and choose what little routines and what exercises and positions that you want to perform to construct your own Mobility Series this wraps up the video it was an absolute pleasure having Walter here and to see him transform in front of my eyes over this past week Walter and I also had a separate discussion that we filmed here that's going to be uploaded to our block therapy channel so you can check that out we will be uploading it relatively soon and that wraps up the video so thank you so much for tuning in make sure you subscribe like this video if it's helped and comment below if you're really noticing a change with your ankle mobility and of course ask any questions below I look forward to seeing you in the next video