Jeremy Reilly is a personal trainer, golf pro and long-term friend of Naturality. 

Jeremy does a great job explaining fitness and exercise over video 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 which caught my interest.

He 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.

You can see his issue from this snapshot from the video (Jeremy is on the right):

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 Afferent Input, 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.

00:16
What causes Range of Motion?

00:40
Muscles need to be strong so you can exercise.

00:48
What causes muscle tone?

01:02
The peroneus tertius test.

01:28
The tibialis anterior test.

02:14
Testing the foot arch.

02:44
Testing the toe flexors.

03:02
Testing the toe extensors.

03:52
Why exercise doesn’t work.

04:44
Biting on a tooth.

09:16
The solution.

10:08
The outcome.

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 is 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.

If you would like to find out more about Jeremy, you can find him on http://www.limitless-life.uk/

Simon King is a musculoskeletal expert who’s primary focus is to treat and prevent musculoskeletal injuries.

He specialises in instant results in patients for whom nothing else has worked.

Simon is available Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

He enjoys taking care of amateur and professional sports people as well as patients with chronic pain and/or disability.