Jeremy Reilly is a personal trainer and golf professional.
Jeremy does a great job with video to explain fitness and training and he is very good at honestly demonstrating some of the challenges he and his clients face and overcome in their quest to be fit and strong.
Recently he posted a video that caught Simon King’s interest.
Jeremy was trying to develop a press squat which is all but impossible for ordinary mortals but is essential for anyone wanting to train in Olympic Lifting.
Decreased mobility (reduced range of motion) is a common problem, not just in ankles but also in low backs, hips, knees and shoulders.
Understandably, Jeremy’s approach was to try to regain mobility through exercise, mobility work and stretching. The answer was more training, which may not be totally logical if training is basically your full-time career.
His predicament piqued my interest because with my training in Afferentology, I usually find that joints lose their mobility when the muscles that move them aren’t pulling strongly enough, and I wondered if that might be his problem.
I wondered if a weakness of the muscles which extend his ankle (dorsiflexors and toe extensors) might be inhibited, so I offered to check him over.
In this video you will see that we did indeed find weakness in his toe extensors. The next question is “Why?” and I am sure you will be surprised by the solution.
It turns out that Jeremy’s toes did not need exercise, they needed to be made to work properly by finding the source of nerve interference that was messing up his toe function.
Naturally, there was still work to do, but at least now when Jeremy exercises, his ankle will extend more and all of his hard work will not go to waste.