Episode 326: Have you ever hurt your ankle? Popped some ligaments but never did anything to fix it? BJJ folks are famous for not tapping to ankle locks which results in damage and ultimately some issues in life off the mats! JT and Joey explain how having a "dodgy" ankle can really mess up many other parts of your athletic ability - squatting, jumping and running. They then go deep on the exact steps you need to follow in order to rehab your stiff ankles and gradually build back strength and stability so you can confidence to grapple on your feet. There are surprise topics in this episode including the type of shoes you wear, how often are you bare foot and why Flip Flops are making your squat weaker.
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Episode 326: Have you ever hurt your ankle? Popped some ligaments but never did anything to fix it? BJJ folks are famous for not tapping to ankle locks which results in damage and ultimately some issues in life off the mats! JT and Joey explain how having a "dodgy" ankle can really mess up many other parts of your athletic ability - squatting, jumping and running. They then go deep on the exact steps you need to follow in order to rehab your stiff ankles and gradually build back strength and stability so you can confidence to grapple on your feet. There are surprise topics in this episode including the type of shoes you wear, how often are you bare foot and why Flip Flops are making your squat weaker.
Get all the juicy details on everything BJJ - Tap,Nap and Snap!
The Newsletter for grapplers https://www.tapnapandsnap.com/?utm_source=BPPod
Get Stronger & More Flexible for BJJ with the Bulletproof For BJJ App- Start your 7 Day FREE Trial: https://bulletproofforbjj.com/register
Stay Hydrated with Sodii the tastiest electrolytes in the Game! Get 15% OFF: BULLETPROOF15 https://sodii.com.au/bulletproof
Parry Athletic - Best training gear in the game... Get 20% OFF Discount Code: BULLETPROOF20 https://parryathletics.com/collections/new-arrivals
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Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. My goodness, do you have bad ankles? Have you got jacked up ankles because you didn't tap to a foot lock or you rolled it when you're playing footy, or you kicked a pole and tore a ligament? Like you've got bad ankles and you did nothing about it. We want to help you fix your bad ankles because we believe it will improve your BJJ, and so we're going to break that down a little bit. What do you do? I got that bad ankle. I've rolled it 15 times I do rehab. It's no good. Or I just don't tap the foot locks because who needs ligaments anyway, all these kinds of things. I believe that because in jujitsu we don't do as much work on our feet as some of our other grappling cousins and other athletic pursuits, we kind of get away with it. You know, people have got bad ankles, like crazy story, fabio colloy, who's one of the top guys at alliance top featherweight, um, he fought paulo meow back in the day, whatever 10 years ago, and folded polo's big toe into his calf like completely, yeah, yeah, toe, hold snapped his ankle and polo just let it happen and end up taking fabinio's back. You know it's like, yeah, take the ankle, I don't care right. And those guys, the meow brothers, are the kind who are like, yeah, snap, snap my knee, that's fine, I will happily sacrifice that connective tissue In order to win. Yeah, but maybe if you're a guard player you can get away with it. But when you look at wrestlers and judokas, even though they get injuries, they've got great ankles, they've got the dexterity on the feet, they've got the agility, they can move. We tend to sacrifice it in jiu-jitsu, yeah. So yeah, I guess going back to like the fundamental sort of use of your ankle.
Speaker 1:If you look at any athlete that's good on their feet, soccer players are a great example. They're pretty good. I always played soccer growing up. Fuck, I played soccer till I was like 20. The man knows how to take a dive. Been thinking about going back, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah do it. But I know anyone I train, anyone I train roll with who's played. The man knows how to take a dive. Been thinking about going back. Oh the comeback. Yeah, yeah, do it. But I know anyone I train, anyone I train roll with who's played soccer usually pretty hard to take down. Good on the feet, yeah, good on the feet. Right.
Speaker 1:Athletic legs, wrestlers, judokas, sports where the goal is to stay on your feet they are oddly good on their feet.
Speaker 1:I imagine your balance, they are oddly good on their feet.
Speaker 1:But imagine athletic leg thing.
Speaker 1:Now you can look at certain and I.
Speaker 1:This concept of the athletic leg is like like yeah, yeah, can't follow. But you look at, say, some dude that like works out upper body at the gym all the time. We see these dudes when you go to fitness first and they're jacked in the upper body and then they've got these little toothpick legs now, and I'm not trying to have a go at the disproportionate distribution of muscle mass on their body, but their legs are actually neglected to the point where there is very little athleticism. Yeah, Right One, yeah, they're not carrying the same amount of muscle mass, but they're also. They're not springy, they're not coordinated, they're not intelligent legs. You know, people are like what do you fucking mean? Intelligent, like intelligent, like a soccer player. You look at the foot shit. They do the footwork's incredible. Yeah, that's like a pianist, you know, doing their thing, like the coordination in those feet, and so in jiu-jitsu we don't really need that, no Now. And you look at like I often look at this when you see people come out. You see it more in the heavyweight divisions, like you watch Gordon, it's just this flat-footed stepping and that's not a, that's not having a dig at anyone, because that's the sport, right, it's really about connecting and then fucking.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess it depends on the person, depends on the style. You do see, if you've got someone who has more of a wrestling background person depends on the style. You do see, if you've got someone who has more of a wrestling background, so you can say like a gary tonin, or, yeah, pj barge, pj, but they are. So that's right and it stands out to us. But that that is more of an exception than the rule, that's right, you know. Yeah, I think the jujitsu doesn't demand that of you. It can if you want to play like that, yeah, but it doesn't demand it of you.
Speaker 1:So for a lot of people coming in and training, you know they join a jiu-jitsu academy. There's probably, unless you're showing up to a gym that is like really big on the wrestling side of things, there's probably not going to be. Like, if you're not coming in with athletic legs, you're probably not going to build them there. That's right and you can get away with it. If you're a kind of guadero, if you're someone who's like, no, I play guard, I pull guard, I play off my back, this is what I do, then okay, yeah, you can kind of get away with it.
Speaker 1:But where you cannot get away with it, my friends is in real life, like if you have to keep your balance or if you have to walk up some stairs or down some stairs, you know, know, and if you have to squat and this is where it comes through for me I'll have someone who's so good at jujitsu? And you think, wow, they're so athletic, and that you see their abs. And you're like, wow. And then you go all right, I just want you to do a body weight squat. Yeah, could you just do your workout topless, like it's just a requirement of the gym, sorry.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing. You go, okay, squat, and they're struggling, right, usually they'll elevate on the toes because ankles are tight. The heels will come off the ground. They're like, oh, I'm squatting. You're like, no, that's not, I need your heels to stay flat. And they put their feet really wide and they lean forward. Knees come in. Yeah, it's all over the shop. And so you're like, wow, this is a super basic quality in terms of being able to control your body and you can't do it because your ankles are fugida that means fucked in Portuguese. So we need to improve this quality because squatting is so good for our bodies and also having agility is also really good. So let me highlight this.
Speaker 1:We used to do this at taekwondo, but we did this at judo, where someone's holding one leg and the other person's holding a leg and you're holding like the lapel and you kind of hop in a circle. You go, okay, now we're going to hop back the other way. Yeah, and what is so funny to me? I actually did this drill with um, one of my jiu-jitsu classes in Melbourne. Everyone's calves blew out, everyone's like, oh, my feet, my calves, I'm down coach. Like people just blew out and then they could barely walk off a minute worth of drills. And you're like, surely we need there needs to be a bit of correction here. Yeah, and surely some level of physical conditioning would be appropriate. Yeah, and it's not in this arena.
Speaker 1:It's not to say you have to be able to dunk a basketball or any some such crazy business, but you will have to defend a single leg at some stage. You know you might have to defend a sweep and you're going to have to hop on your leg and if you can't balance through your ankle or stabilize, you're going to fall and the chance of maybe a knee injury or even a further ankle injury it's going to be there, yeah, so I feel like there's there's a couple reasons why we don't have great ankles in bjj. One, you don't necessarily have to have great ankles to be great at jujitsu absolutely not, there's that. But then, two, it's this pride thing. Oh, I don't tap to foot locks? No, no, no. So it's just a straight foot lock.
Speaker 1:But actually every time someone's yanking on those ligaments and you're not tapping to it, you're accumulating a little bit of damage. Yeah, and the more you don't, you're all good till you're not like, oh, I never get tapped on this because, snap, and now you've got a ruptured ligament and now maybe you've got to have some surgery and that becomes your bad ankle and that then means you've got a less functioning knee, less functioning hip, and it's one of these things. It just has a cascade of effects and we don't want you guys to get injured or more injured than you already are. We want to undo that shit and get you being primed athletic monsters. So maybe what we can talk about is a little bit about things people can do which will improve their ankles. Yeah, just from a um.
Speaker 1:I just want to add from a human movement perspective, like looking at the whole body having strong feet, which the feet are the ankles, you know, and you could argue, is the knees, is the hips, yeah, but you know, feeding the ankles, kind of one in the same, that is like a foundation of a strong, durable, human yep. In the same way that, like you know, having kind of thickened skin on your hands and a reasonable grip is also part of that, but even more so the feet. Because you walk, you're on your feet all the time, and so if we take it away from jiu-jitsu for a minute, but we just talk about general athleticism like that for me is almost like the base of the pyramid. Yes, yes, because you can't build, you can't build athleticism if your feet and ankles are a wreck. Yeah, right, simple as that. You can. You know, maybe you can strap them up, get back out in the basketball court, like you can bypass it to an extent.
Speaker 1:But to develop like this, this actual physicality that is unassisted and is, you know, something that you naturally possess without needing to rely on accessories, it starts with the feet. Yeah, and just if we go a bit further down the track, they have shown that people who look after their feet when they're older are less likely to fall and break bones. Right, so you actually have greater longevity and quality of life, because, I mean, you could be on a bunch of drugs in a wheelchair and just have someone pushing you around, but if you want to just get around your home and live your life on your own terms. You've got to be able to stand up and sit down out your chair. You want to be able to bend forward. The people who neglected their feet, neglected their ankles, that choice was taken away from them because they took falls, they had hip replacements, they broke their arms and then eventually they were at a point of disablement that they couldn't live their lives on their own terms, and we don't want that for you.
Speaker 1:But the first step that I always point to with people with the ankles that are less than optimal is the rolling of the feet with the lacrosse ball, cricket ball, whatever kind of ball you like and then the stretching of actually the lower calf, the soleus Achilles, because typically people will maybe stretch their upper calf and be like oh yeah, that's cool, but actually the thing that really helps you get lower in the squat is working the ankle mobility. Thing that really helps you get lower in the squat is working the ankle mobility, so finding a way to get your hip lower and so getting your hip down towards your heel and pushing your knee over your toe, because this is typically where people do the bench, bench knee. Yeah, so you can definitely stretch your calf with straight leg, which is more your gastrocs, your upper calf. That's what the main thing people look at. But what we're talking about is improving that ankle function and there's a bunch of ways you can do it. But getting down like I like to roll the feet just as a preparatory thing to help you, but then getting into that low squat position is usually that's a challenge for a lot of people. Yeah, it is, yep. Um, there are folks out there who just have and I've encountered a few who just just have ankles that are naturally tight and they will never be able to squat with a flat foot all that comfortably. Yeah, you know that is a thing. That is not the majority.
Speaker 1:There is a large portion of people who have suffered ankle injuries, like myself playing football. Sure, sprained it really badly, never let it heal properly. I have this swollen, kind of mutated ankle as a result. I just thought that was Joe's bone density. I thought it was just growth hormone. I wish it was Joe. Joe's got these jacare fucking bones bro. No, that right ankle's a mess, and that's the same knee that I did the ligament on. Oh shit, maybe there's a connection there, maybe not, maybe not, but as a result, that ankle has always been more exposed, like it's really easy for me to re-injure it. In my first years of jiu-jitsu I did it a bunch, just stepping, defending a takedown. Ah, fuck, pinch some scar tissue and it flares up again. That's something we've got to be mindful of.
Speaker 1:Right, two categories or you might just be tight because you don't move much, yeah, and you wear shoes that restrict your feet all day and you're not really doing stuff in the gym, so you're not expressing ranges of motion that should be inherent to your physicality, and so now that we're telling you, you're like, fuck, all right, let me check this out, yeah, so there's it's. It's very probable that, like I would say, at least 50 of the people I work with have tight ankles. I would say more. I would actually say that, like, the vast majority of people, even if you don't do jiu-jitsu, will have tighter ankles. It's actually always a surprise to me if someone can just do, like, a really good arse-to-bar squat and typically it's not because their ankles are good, it's because their hips are good They'll be able to pop straight down and you're like, oh, actually, your knee is not actually moving that far over your toe, yeah, and so even if you're not someone who wants to do big, heavy squats, it's not actually so much the problem, it's your ability to get down and up and down off the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really is what it translates to, and in jujitsu that's bloody important and it's hip function right, because you think, like, if you don't like, just from that gross mechanics perspective, if you don't have ankles that allow you to squat down deep, you are probably never really going to squat deep, you won't. And so in that way way, then your knees don't get like that full flexion, yep, and your hips don't get that full flexion, not getting the lubrication, yeah. So then, because of that one thing, these two major joints in your body are just not getting used to their full extent, yeah, and that brings about its own problems. And also, you're going to compensate. So when you finally go, you know what i'm'm sick of this. I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to do squats, I'm going to X, y, z.
Speaker 1:You're like man, I can't squat properly and you use your back too much because you can't get your knees over your toes. Your hips go further back, you lean further forward. You're like man. Every time I do squats, my lower back hurts, like what's going on with that? Well, actually, the thing that we generally advocate for as a a stop gap measure it's just a bandaid, it's just an interim thing is to elevate your heels. Now, plenty of people out there do it, but they never get past that. Yeah, they just chalk their heels or they wear weightlifting shoes and that's for life. And that what it does. By elevating your heel, it takes the ankle out of it a little bit, which allows you to get deeper into the squat position, which is awesome. It's actually really good for you to get that benefit. But if you don't spend a bit of time in that lower squat position and trying to push your knees over your toes and working your ankles there, it will just never change.
Speaker 1:And I think why do we want you to do this? We don't want you to get any more other injuries. We don't want you to be like, yeah, go to the gym. The boys, the bulletproof boys, they say, oh, I've got to lift, and then you've got bad ankles and you're like, oh man, I kind of jacked my back up doing squats, yeah. And then you get something else and you know, poor feet, poor ankles, bad knees, bad hips, bad back. It flows up, but if we can actually spend some time, you know, stretching your calves, working on stability in the ankle.
Speaker 1:Now here's something that we don't typically do in jujitsu hopping Like it's just not so much a thing, and I've definitely since Joe brought it up I can't remember how long ago it was, maybe six months, a bit longer, it was just after my knee rehab yeah, right, yeah, maybe it's more A few years now. Yeah, but we started talking about the benefit of doing hopping as a proprioceptive thing. Just, you know, one or two sets on each leg, hopping 10, 15 times to help switch on that whole chain hip your quad, your hamstring, your calf, all the proprioceptors around your ankle for just reducing your chance of injury. Yeah, and and and you, you don't really see people in jiu-jitsu doing that like, no hopping jumping like jiu-jitsu warm-ups might have you jogging or star jumps and stuff, but not hopping and stabilizing, which is something that we do in our program. Yeah, which really does expose the feet, the ankles, doesn't it like? You can't? You can do that. You can run around, do the high knees and the kick. You know heels to butt with a flat foot, but the hopping drills you gotta like, you gotta have strength, you know, you gotta have integrity to that, to the ankle joint, to the foot, to be able to do them well, yeah, yeah, it's huge. Like I mean any other sport, right, wrestlers, judokas, people sprinting, like, yeah, football players, everyone does it. Yeah, they're doing many variations of that. You know, you always see them doing like an, a skip or a counter step, like, yeah, it's. Actually I used to do a lot of ladder drills in taekwondo because my, my coach, carlo, used to get get out the speed ladder and he used to make us do the most complicated drills so that we would have better footwork for taekwondo. But I actually found that helped me a lot when I came to doing boxing and other things where you needed better footwork. But it's like footwork isn't taught in jiu-jitsu. You know, no one's doing fucking speed ladder drills at bjj.
Speaker 1:Being barefoot more is a really simple like starting point for folks. It's like if you're wearing shoes all the time, if you wear shoes in the house, you wear shoes into your backyard. Yeah, you wear shoes. When you take the bins out, you wear shoes. You know, when you're jumping in the car going like fuck man, your feet are never in a position where they can just express themselves, yeah, right. So I would argue like, yeah, just being barefoot more often is is like the really easiest starting point. People might look at you, funny, go to the shops barefoot, fuck them, yeah, um, you know, or get barefoot, you know, you can wear barefoot shoes, shit we wear. That's a really simple starting point. I had an epic point to make sort of counter to that, like oh, no, adjacent to that, but I can't remember what it was. We'll come back to it because I want to talk about that barefoot thing.
Speaker 1:Really, think about jujitsu. You don't wear shoes in jujitsu right now, even though some people will put on wrestling boots. Right, there's, there's a value to that. If you're shooting a lot, you don't want to get turf toe or, you know, you don't just want it to fucking splurge on the new kid because you're doing a wrestling class. Now, I got the new. Yeah, fucking, you know. Yeah, the kyle dake, kyle dake. I don't know who he is, but he's a fucking sick. He's a weapon. Yeah, um, my double legs are still so shit, I, I got those Jordan Burrows, those JB7s boy. All I see is gold baby. Yeah, I'm a wrestler now.
Speaker 1:I saw this pretty early, because the funny thing is, when I started Taekwondo there was no shoes. And then at some point, I believe that the Federation's like we need more money. There is now Adidas Taekwondo shoes yeah, I've seen those and then people started wearing them and it was a thing and it was like, oh, what, we've all got to buy shoes now. And then they were like they tried it for a while and then like now you can't wear them in competition. So I was like, oh, that's weird, but now we're selling foot guards. It was like, ah, glove sleeve thing, yeah, but for your feet, because athletes would take like compressed foam over their feet because you're kicking in type 1A, you kick with your feet Wrongly, but I mean, it's the game. So what was interesting was and I started to realize, each couple of years the Federation would be like, okay, now you need special gloves. And sure they were saying, oh, it's in line with the sport, but they're just making a ton of money because you had to wear. The Federation ticked, you know, we certify these gloves so you may wear them, because they're getting a kickback right. But what it made me realize is actually we're not getting the knuckle conditioning, which used to be a thing that we used to do push-ups on our knuckles, and it was the idea that you could punch cleanly and smoothly and not break your knuckles Anyway, whatever. And also that you try to kick with your feet so you don't break your feet, even though plenty of our kickboxing friends are just going fucking idiots. And I did break a bone in my foot kicking my foot.
Speaker 1:But, speaking to jujitsu, I don't lift in shoes. I don't because we don't do jujitsu in shoes. I'm always relating it back to a jujitsu lens. In the same way, you don't have a weight belt when you do jujitsu in shoes. I'm always relating it back to a jujitsu lens. In the same way, you don't have a weight belt when you do jujitsu, even though plenty of our powerlifting friends will say no, no, no, the weight belt is there so you can lift more. Well, I don't want to try and lift a weight that I can't lift without a weight belt. I just want to use my muscles to do that job. Same thing I don't want to wear straps to hold more weight. If I can't fucking hold it, I won't lift it.
Speaker 1:What a lot of you are possibly missing as a blind spot is you can't do certain things barefoot, but we do them anyway. Right, like running in built up sneakers. If you run on concrete barefoot, you run on your toes Like you're not running. You're not heel striking that bad boy Forefoot, midfoot, what have you? Same thing in jujitsu If your feet are dumb, you know they talk about unintelligent feet If you haven't done a bit of work with balance, with proprioception, with agility, which is your ability to like, break, change direction and come back, you're going to fuck your shit up when you're rolling.
Speaker 1:And so barefoot for me has always been the first thing in my mind. Not because I necessarily want to walk around the streets barefoot, but I always just wear my visually offensive jesus sandals. Yes, I know that, uh, all praise the dark prince and and joe always mocking me with my, my, uh, yeah, standard, yeah, but I'm all about them. But the great thing is this the great thing is because those sandals have a heel strap. It means my foot can act naturally. Yeah, it can relax, it can spread and push off in the way a foot would, as opposed to like.
Speaker 1:A lot of you are wearing flip-flops, and we advocate for flip-flops in the gym as a hygiene thing. But if you wear… for mechanics, though it's bad because it tightens toes up yeah, toes and ankle toes and ankle right, and so that has a lot of carry-on effects. So, first step, get barefoot if you can, whether it's your garden or just walking around your apartment, whatever it is. Spend a bit more time in your bare feet. Yeah, and like. Look at your, look at your feet and view them as like you know, like you look at the rest of your body in the mirror. Look at your feet and be like they look strong. Can I move? You know? Like are they? You know? And start start to look at other people's feet and you will. You will see like, just like your shoulders, just like your biceps. They also carry muscle and density to the bones and to the ligaments and you want a foot that is dense and muscular, you know, and stable, right. So I mean this is the classic thing.
Speaker 1:If you look back at Weston, a Price, who was the what was– he went around the world. He went and studied different societies 19th century he was looking at. I think he wasn't just of the 19th century he was looking at. I think he wasn't just looking at feet. Was he looking at teeth as well? Yeah, he was basically comparing westerners to with more, uh, indigenous cultures. Yeah, yeah, he's looking at dental health. He's looking at eye distance, head formation, fucking hands like everything, feet, and he's like, wow, everyone in the west is like looks malnourished and mutated. Yeah, you know, and it was because we were eating these more modern foods, we didn't have the daily activity, we wore shoes all the time and he got these photographs, which are really interesting to look at, of, you know, classic kind of men like middle-aged men's feet and they're like the shape of the leather-bound shoes they're in. And then he has these indigenous feet and they're like spread and wide Splay and they're two fucking very different like pieces of anatomy right there. Yeah, you know, and it just I think if you just haven't formed that connection in your head, it's a good thing to see because you're like, holy shit, yeah, okay, there's stuff going on because of our modern life. It's having a negative effect on my physicality.
Speaker 1:What I did want to say about the jujitsu scenario is that you're on mats and the mats hide your inefficiency. So, say, with the hopping drills, you can just kind of flop on your heels and do the bouncing drills, but if you go do it on the concrete you cannot bounce on your heels and that will expose like, oh holy shit, like I'm actually weak here. So it's a good like, do what you can, your warm-ups, like it's all of benefit. But training on a hard floor, certain drills, like with your strength training, will expose gaps or weaknesses in the body. Yeah and just.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I this is just something I want to share with you guys, just from a pure gym gym perspective that typically most gyms are not just going to let you rock in their barefoot, but what I am seeing more and more with the popularity of power lifting and everything like this, you're going to see people wearing deadlift slippers. Oh yeah, which are basically just socks with a bit of rubber on the bottom right. They're almost like I don't know if you guys have been to like a bounce house, like a trample, a kid's trampoline emporium, where you know's just all kinds of. They give you socks that have rubberized dots or a pattern on the bottom right. That's kind of what deadlift slippers are, except they put like a little Velcro strap across them to justify that you're paying $150 for fuck all. I mean I don't even fuck with that. I mean most top lifters you'll see will be lifting in some kind of sock, but plenty in barefoot.
Speaker 1:Back in the day in the gym, if you were not wearing shoes, you couldn't come in the gym. We don't allow that in here. Okay, that was back in the day. But understand this, guys. If you're loading 20-kilo plates on and off, what I'm saying here is this If you wear sneakers and you drop a 20 kilo plate on your toe, your toe is still smushed if your foot is barefoot. You know, if you're barefoot, oh yeah, that that whole idea of like you could hurt yourself in bed. It doesn't mean shit, right? So what?
Speaker 1:My advice is this if you feel self-conscious about getting barefoot in the gym, really just take your shoes. If you think it's not appropriate in your gym or whatever, change gyms, but you should be barefoot when you're squatting and when you're deadlifting. That's what I want to advocate for. And if the idiot staff is like, no, no, if you drop a weight on your foot, you have to have shoes, shoes do nothing, yeah, I mean usually with that, it's like company policy. And even though they're clearly're clearly wrong, it's like fuck, what am I going to do? Um, I think if that is the case, you're in, or if you are embarrassed to be barefoot which some people are right, it's fine. Buy some barefoot shoes. Yeah, buy some vivo barefoot or something like that, where your feet and your toes can do what they need to do but they're enclosed in you know a piece of fabric so that you know whatever doesn't fucking disturb anyone's insurance policy. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think that the first thing we've got to do, get a bit more barefoot. We need to look at rolling out the arches of our feet, yep, and then we've got to stretch. Well, we've got to get in that deep squat position. Now, it's different for everyone. So, whether you're chalking your heels or using a pole, getting into that deep squat position so your knee is fully flexed, your butt is down by your heel, your ass to squat and then looking to do different exercises to get your knees pushing up over your toes is one of the best things you can do to improve the ankles. And then the next step up from that, from performance, is being able to do some agility, hopping and stability work, which will directly translate to you being better on the mat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say to interject in between those two points would be calf raises. Yeah, of course. Yeah, like, if you, if you find the hopping stuff and that's it is hard just do calf raises, yeah, do like three sets of 20 or you know, go 10 to 20 reps, do it a few times a week just to build that base level of strength through the ankle and then, over time, bring in the hopping, go to something a bit more plyometric. Well, there it is, folks, we want to fix those ankles for you. It will help you, it will translate to your BJJ.
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