Leg Exercise - Eversion Ankle Exercise

Commonly Used For: Foot pain, ankle pain or dysfunction.

Video Transcription: I'm going to show you how to do an ankle eversion exercise. It works the muscle that's along here on the outside edge of your lower leg. It is important for providing ankle stability and preventing inversion ankle sprains. So you're going to need a length of exercise band that you can get online or at most sporting goods stores [here's one at Amazon.com]. You're going to want to tie a loop at the end, put it around your foot, and then step on it, go around your opposite foot. Hold it nice and tight, your going to point your toes and then just bring your toes out to the side, making sure that your knees stay straight up and down, you don't want your whole leg rocking as you do this it's just your ankle that's moving and you should feel the muscle working right in here. Slowly out and slowly back. Don't let the band whip you back to the starting position like that, it's part of the exercise to control it on the way back in. So that is your ankle eversion exercise.

Leg Exercise - Inversion Ankle Exercise

Commonly Used For: Foot pain, ankle pain, plantar fasciitis and collapsing arches.

Video Transcription: I'm going to show you how to do an inversion ankle exercise, which strengthens the muscle here at the inside edge of your calf. It comes down under and supports the arch of your foot so this is an important exercise to do for anybody who has a problem with their arch collapsing on them or any sort of plantar fasciitis heel pain type problems. So, you're going to need an exercise band that you can get at most sporting goods stores or online [here's one at Amazon.com]. I tied a loop at the end of mine just to make it a little bit easier. So what you're going to do is you're going to cross the leg that you're going to exercise over your opposite leg. Put the loop around your foot so that the band is going over your big toe here. You're going to go behind your opposite foot and up, point your toes downward and then pull out, slowly coming back. You don't want to let it just whip back. That's part of the exercise — slowly controlling it back to the starting position and you should feel a nice burn in the muscle going on either in your arch or up here, up into your leg. You want to make sure that you don't see this tendon in front pop out like that. If you see that tendon popping out, you're using the wrong muscle and you need to point your toes more. So, when I do it correctly, that tendon flattens out. If I do it incorrectly and I'm not pointing my toes enough, you can see that big tendon. So nice and pointed, slowly out to the side and slowly back. So that's your inversion ankle exercise.

Hip Exercise - Clams

Commonly Used For: To avoid knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain and foot pain.

Video Transcription: This is a clams exercise which is a good way to strengthen your gluteus medius, which is on the outside edge of your hip and it's important to keep that one strong both for preventing knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain, foot pain — a lot of reasons to keep that muscles strong. So what you're going to do is to lay down on your side. The side facing up towards the ceiling is the side that you're going to strengthen. You want to have your feet together, your knees together, your hips going to be step straight up towards the ceiling. You don't want to get yourself rock back, or rock too far forward and then just like a clamshell, you're going to open your knees and close them keeping your feet together. You should feel it right here in your glutes. If you're not feeling that muscle working, you might be letting yourself rock back too far, so you can put yourself up against the wall or any other solid surface that can help keep your hips forward, as you raise up and down. It that's too easy, you can use an exercise band. You can get it from a sporting goods store online [here's one at Amazon.com]. You're going to tie your knees together, and then you perform the same exercise just against the resistance of the band now. And there are different levels of band to make this easier or harder. If it's still too easy, what you can do is raise your feet up off the floor, still keeping them together and then again open and close your knees just like a clamshell. Keeping those hips stacked straight up towards the ceiling. And that's the clams exercise.