Your Tight Calves are Costing You

What’s the cost of tight calves? Read on to discover what most doctors and experts don’t tell you about tight calves, and the damage they can cause.

Tight calves can cost you anything from: a good night’s sleep (because of cramping and aching), to not being able to run without knee pain, to not being able to use stairs comfortably. You see, having tight calves may not directly impact your wallet, but it can affect those things in life you care about most. This may seem a bit dramatic, but I see it everyday and people are always astonished at how quickly they are able to improve these things when they take proper care of their calves. Let’s take a look at how tight calves can affect a runner and a weightlifter.

A Runner With Tight Calves

For most runners, longevity is a big goal. They’d like to be able to continue running for as long as possible. For this reason being efficient and being able to run with the least amount of impact on the joints and muscles is of high priority. Each joint in our body relies on the joints next to it, it’s a concept called regional interdependence. The main role of the calf muscles in running is to absorb shock and then propel you forward. If your calf muscle is tight, one of two things happen. Either the shock absorption is completed through the calf in a shorter range of motion, or the load is passed up the chain to other joints to absorb. If your calf is to do the same amount of work in half the distance, the amount of force it absorbs doubles. Over time this will lead to calf muscle and achille’s tendonitis injury. If the force is passed up the chain, then it can easily lead to knee pain and hip pain as well.

Many runners have encountered the doctor who says the dreaded words “oh yeah, we just need to go in and clean it up a little bit” in reference to meniscus surgery. When it comes to meniscus surgery vs. physical therapy, the results might shock you. If you’d like some tips for knee pain and meniscus injury we’ve got just the write up for you.

A Weightlifter With Tight Calves

An important position to be able to get in for most weightlifting athletes is a squat. This is a complex position requiring mobility from head to toe. Having a lack of mobility in your calf or ankle musculature is a surefire way to end up with a squat that either favors one side of the body, or puts another joint at jeopardy and can easily lead to back pain and sciatica. Your calf musculature plays a big role in how well your ankles bend to allow you to put your weight appropriately in your feet. If the ankles do not bend far enough forward, one of two things usually happens.

Compensation #1: Your weight stays too far back in your heels. Now a lot of your weight should be in your heels with a good squat, but more is not better in this case. When you are unable to get a good amount of weight to your forefoot due to tight calves, this can expose you to compensating to get weight forward elsewhere. It can lead to you rounding your back or pushing your shoulders too far out in front of you to provide the counterbalance. This can expose you to low back pain, shoulder pain, or neck pain. If you’re curious about solutions for those issues, just click the links. Rounding your back can be dangerous because it may expose you to herniated or bulging discs. 

Compensation #2: You turn your feet outwards and allow your arch to collapse into pronation. In this way you’re able to keep the issues in compensation #1 from happening, but you’ve introduced a new problem. Pronating your feet allows for increased load to be placed on your medial knee, exposing you to meniscus and ligament injury, as well as once again exposing your low back to increased load due to the mechanics it causes up the chain.

It’s easy to see once it’s drawn out how tight calves can lead to poor lifting mechanics or running mechanics and impact physical activity. They can also affect your sleep by making it difficult for blood to circulate and inducing cramps or a chronic lower leg fatigue feeling. To combat tight calves is surprisingly simple with the right exercises given to you in the right order.

If you’re ready to work with an expert so that you can get rid of this pesky issue, give us a call at 480-482-0651 or stop by our contact us page to fill out a contact form and let us know how we can help!

If you or someone you know has been dealing with an ankle, hip, or knee injury it could be tight calves! If you just can’t seem to make any headway on your injury and are frustrated and looking for answers give us a call. We help athletes of all levels stay active and lead healthy lives every day and we would be thrilled to help you stay active.