How to program for stronger feet and ankles. Part one.
Part One
An integral part of a plan to improve function, strength and reduce pain, is exercise and rehabilitation prescription. It involves the use of a specific exercise plan, with the aim of improving the capacity of an individual. As you may have read in our Load Versus Capacity Blog, building capacity is vital for the foot and ankle. The higher the capacity, the greater the ability to handle the load that is being applied during walking, running and whatever activity you love to do.
The aim of exercise and rehabilitation prescription is to induce an adaptation. Your practitioner will decide what adaptation is required, based on a comprehensive history and understanding of your current capacity and activity goals.
There's six different adaptations you can get from exercise at a muscular level. There are adaptations at an energy system level, but we’ll leave that for another blog. These adaptations are as follows:
Skill: This is the ability to complete a movement with technical proficiency. All the way from specific calf raise technique, to squatting and running technique. The goal is to move well, before increasing the load.
Strength: This is the amount of force a muscle or group of muscles can exert under a given condition.
Speed: This is moving in a particular direction as fast as possible.
Power: This is the ability to overcome resistance (a load) in the shortest amount of time. Power is a function of speed and strength. It is measured by multiplying speed by strength.
Hypertrophy: Is the adaptation of a muscle by the increase in muscle cell size.
Muscular Endurance: Is the ability to consistently overcome resistance for an extended period of time.
(By the way - fat loss is not an adaptation, it is a byproduct of exercise).
With each of the above adaptations you’re trying to achieve, it happens, physiologically, as a byproduct of stress.
‘The principles are few, but the methods are many’
Progressive Overload is the key training principle that is involved in all exercise and associated adaptation. Progressive overload is simply doing more over time to provide local muscular stress. If you continue to do the exact same workout over time, you can’t expect much improvement. You can keep maintenance, but you're not going to be adding additional stress. So in general, you have to have some sort of progressive overload. This comes in many forms:
Adding more weight
More repetitions
More often in the week
Adding complexity to the movement. Such as going from a partial range of motion to a full range of motion
These are modifiable variables. The different ways exercise and rehabilitation prescription can be modified. I will expand on the modifiable variable in Part Two.
Want to check in with one of our practitioners about your foot and ankle capacity?