Becoming Highly Agile & Quick Using Advanced Foot + Ankle Training Progressions: Proprioceptive and Plyometric Exercises for the Lower Leg
Huge post with video tutorials on how to advance your base of support (the feet/ankles) to maximize your agility, explosive potential & reduce injury risk - good for any and all populations
Contents:
“The Nervous System is a 2-way Street”
“Upper body smart, Lower body dumb”
“‘Body to Brain’ & ‘Brain to Body’ actions”
Advanced Training for the Foot & Ankle Progressive Exercises and Video
How to program these into your week
Micro-dosing training
Training the Lower Limbs for Athleticism
We have covered the importance of training the lower leg/feet & how they are commonly neglected in the intro posts (recommended) part 1 & part 2 here.
Our hands and feet are comparatively “small” comparted to our larger body parts, but they are ENORMOUS in terms of nerve density - and this should be a clue to you that they are *very important*.
The implications of your coordination ability getting better or worse has massive impact both to the fractions of a second that dictates success in physical sport or the dangers of falling or injuring ourselves even in everyday life. (This can get a lot worse past 50 years old if you ignore it)
The Nervous System is a 2-way Street
For educational purposes, this is an important concept to consider if you want to make the most out of your health & performance fitness training:
We speak about the nervous system frequently here, of course, but the general emphasis is in improving your brain’s ability to create stronger signals toward the body to produce outputs - which is a very good thing. The CNS doesn’t only operate in a single direction however, and this is important to note. It is not only our ability to rapidly coordinate from the brain’s impulse to the body but to also be able to rapidly coordinate signals from the body to the brain.
Last month I wrote about upper body focused coordination drills you can include in any program here.
There is a general principle I tend to follow which is why I separate how we approach upper and lower body coordination efforts:
“Upper body smart - Lower body dumb” (credit to Ben Clarfield)
Our hands usually need to respond to a moving external object in most cases when it comes to fine motor skills - This is true when catching a ball, throwing/parrying a punch, or manipulating a hockey stick. The coordination demands & responsibilities of the lower body are often much different, however.
It isn’t only the eyes’ reaction to a visual stimulus that dictates our coordination & proprioception of the lower body. In fact, we often aren’t using our eyes to dictate where our feet need to go at all.
As a rule of thumb, the upper body is using the brain's (eyes/visual) senses to produce a desired movement response to the arms and hands - this is the during most of the upper limb related tasks that you can think of.
The lower body however has a much different set of tasks. The foot/ankle/leg/hips need to coordinate WITHOUT as much visual input. (Especially during athletic activity - good athletes don’t “watch their step” honestly)
The lower limbs are responding much more to your sense of “touch” and more specifically your “mechanoreceptors” in your feet & lower body.
*Note: you can read the prior basic training posts for the foot/ankle part 1 & part 2 here.
The nature of your feet is they need to move more “instinctively” & be secure enough to handle the rough and tumble impacts between them and the ground from all angles.
Your feet in particular possess extreme nerve density and the nervous systems connection to them is very potent. This (and the last post) have so much importance because of the fact that your ankle is responsible for everything stacked on top of it and it needs to step and make the right “micro-movements” in order to move your best, especially in sports with opposition deliberately trying to throw you off.
(There are times when the legs respond to the eyes and the hands respond to “feel” of course but this is a general principle that applies to most situations)
In contrast to the upper body drills, this post will demonstrate the nuances in utilizing exercises to build the lower legs ability to move, accept force and apply it in various situations on 1 & 2 legs as well as a secondary focus on actually moving the leg as an active limb during activity - i.e. kicking a person or a ball.
Simply put, the lower leg needs to be more elastic & coordinated through NON-VISUAL means than the upper body does.
Lower leg proprioception and coordination are often meant to facilitate the actions of the upper body by bringing you where you need to go while preventing falls and accelerating movement through wide spans of space. Hence, upper body coordination is more focused on its own fine motor skills while the lower is about building stability and elastic strength + coordinating the base for the upper body to communicate with.
“Upper body smart, Lower body Dumb” (remember?)
I also refer to these types of coordination reactions as:
A) “Brain to body” actions (ie you *see* a ball and catch it)
&
B) “body to brain” actions (ie you take a step to the side on an uneven or slippery surface & your foot/leg “learns” what it needs to do by feeling itself in space)
These exercises will be very diverse & cover a wide variety of concepts, and some will be quite challenging. However, use them at your own pace, train sensibly, and we will discuss after how to incorporate them into your week of workouts.
They will also generally begin with foundational exercises and progressively get harder and more advanced + “complete” in their demands from your athletic ability.
Direct Advanced Training for the Foot & Ankle
Beyond the basic strength training that we have covered in the past which is used to build the “hardware” of the lower leg, this section will begin to blend more “software” related elements into your training (This refers to the nervous system being prioritized more over just muscle).
By using these exercises and progressing them as indicated you will improve your ability to control your movement
(Video links embedded - Watch the full videos as they contain *a lot* of very valuable detail)