Running didn’t feel that great yesterday morning — probably due to the physio session the day before. But my Achilles felt good later yesterday. And today it was heaps better. I barely noticed anything on my run this morning.
Calves: my weak link
According to my physio, the calves work hard when going uphill. It’s basically the glutes and calves going up and the quads coming down.
Out of these muscles, my calves are surely the weak link. So once I get over this injury, I’m going to work though the progressions on this page to make my calves stronger.
I’ve always avoided calf exercises because they seemed to cause niggles. But precisely for this reason I probably should have focused on them.
I’ve started doing static calf holds four times a day (5×45″ with a 15″ break) in line the progression outlined here. I think it is already helping.
Rehab for increasing pain threshold
In this podcast, the researcher/physio interviewed explains why exercises help rehab.
It’s not just to make the muscles stronger and hence more resilient to injury. Apparently doing exercises also increases your threshold for pain in the area worked, and this also makes you more robust.
Fascinating!
It makes sense from my experience.
Oftentimes, calf niggles and tweaks seem to be from oversensitivity — an overreaction to a brusque movement that no way could have caused damage and obviously doesn’t most of the time because the pain’s gone the next day.
So calf raises and skipping, here I come!
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