Below is the transcript for the Band-Assisted Ankle Mobilization Exercise video above.
This is Trevor from Motus. I’m here to show you an ankle mobilization that we do to improve dorsiflexion, which is the ability to bend your knee forward, like we would have looked at with the knee-to-wall assessment.
I’m set up in the clinic here, so we can do this quite well. We’re using a monster band, which is a bit thicker a band than you’ll normally find in physiotherapy clinics—more often in gyms—and we’re going to need something to elevate my foot a couple of inches off the ground.
So, what I’m going to do here is put this band on the front of my foot; if I had a shoe on, it would be over my shoelaces. So I’m going to kind of pull my foot forward, and I’m going to need a little bit of muscle to do this. But I’m going to pull my foot forward and let it sit back on the firmly on the bench, and then I’m going to step back onto it.
So the band is now pulling my foot back and downwards, and so it’s going to hold one of the bones in my foot, ideally, in place as I’m allowed to then bend my knee forward. So, it’s just like that knee-to-wall assessment if you’ve seen that: the knee goes straight forward over the second toe. And I’ll repeat this 10 to 15 times, ideally with no pain. We shouldn’t be having any discomfort when we do this.
And then your re-test would be after a few repetitions, or potentially even two or three sets if it seems to be making an improvement. We’d just need to look at that knee-to-wall test again and just see how well, or how easily, or with how much discomfort can you push your knee forward over the wall.
