01/27/2025
Adam from is a friend and colleague who is an expert in all things running and foot and ankle injuries. I am 4 weeks out of an ankle sprain while playing basketball. He helped me last Friday doing some ankle joint mobilizations and we did some before and after testing to see the effect of the treatment.
Before and after tests included midfoot mobility/hip ER with knee bent, ankle Dorsiflexion test, step down, and single leg hopping.
The technique he did is called posterior fibular glides with ankle plantar flexed and inverted that he learned from . The goal of this technique is to improve ankle range of motion and change pain perceptions around foot and ankle positions.
The results weren’t as dramatic as we were hoping, but it did improve some objective measures (mid foot mobility increased from 25 to 35 degrees of external rotation, no significant change in Dorsiflexion). And it did improve the subjective feeling of the post test movements (less pain with step down and single leg hop, able to perform More single leg hops before onset of pain).
Sometimes manual therapy like this can cause drastic changes very quickly, which is always nice for Instagram! But often times in real life the results aren’t AS dramatic.
Nonetheless, if manual therapy like this helps “open up a window” for more movement and strengthening potential, I’d call that a worthy pursuit.
Thanks to Adam for helping me out with my ankle rehab with the manual therapy and also giving me some pointers about the relationship between big toe contact and foot stability.