Daily Mobility Exercises by Dr. Kelly Starrett › Forums › General › Heel Chord Barbell Smash

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    • 11/12/2013 at 10:19 pm #70589
      Avatar[email protected]
      Participant

      heel chord barbell smash does not hurt me.  I double it up with my own foot, it does not phase me.  When I do banded distraction  into pistol I feel like my heel chord becomes steal.  I have no sliding surfaces.  I can feel restriction.  So am I missing something in the barbell smash?  

    • 11/13/2013 at 8:52 am #73185
      AvatarJames Beatty
      Participant

      Try voodoo banding your heel cord. Do some ankle circles, calf raises, and maybe a few pistols and then see how it feels. You may have better luck that route.

    • 11/13/2013 at 9:20 am #73186
      Avatar[email protected]
      Participant

      Voodoo banding seems to help in the realm of capsule restriction, but I can still feel a very stiff “heel chord” in the position of emphasis,  so I can see why my ankle mobility goes back to being stiff again.  I will double down on voodoo flossing, but I am still looking for some pressure to address the steel heel chord without having a super friend. 

    • 11/13/2013 at 10:35 pm #73189
      AvatarAnonymous
      Guest

      ball wacking
      Episode 350: Tack And Floss: Heel Cord Edition
      Episode 319: Protect Those Heel Cords Man!
      Episode 285: Sliding Surfaces; Ankle Range of Motion Case Study Part 1
      Episode 285: Sliding Surfaces; Ankle Range of Motion Case Study Part 2
      Episode 258: Ankle Mobility-Self Mulligan Technique  

      Episode 25: Heel Cords of a Cheetah, Achilles Well Being

    • 11/14/2013 at 9:16 am #73194
      Avatar[email protected]
      Participant

      I feel like I get nothing out of ball wacking as well especially if this is steel we are talking about…

    • 11/14/2013 at 8:34 pm #73200
      AvatarAnonymous
      Guest

      Are you sure you are performing the mobilizations properly?
      Mobilizations shouldn’t hurt.
      The barbell smash isn’t a mobilization that hits the cause of your heel cord issue.
      Have you looked up and down stream of the issue?
      What are you doing to address your heel cord?

    • 11/14/2013 at 10:52 pm #73203
      Avatar[email protected]
      Participant

      I think of the ball whack comparison to taking up the slack of my skin in the heel chord barbell scenario.  I literally have no extra skin to work with.  So when I ball whack my skin I feel nothing changing really.  Same with smashing my heel chord against the barbell.  When I say “hurt” I mean more like tender tissue pain — you know the pain cave.  I feel like as I go along with mobilization I know what normal tissue feels like.  I would say my heel chord feels normal, but when I go in the position of restriction such as down in a squat I have very very tight skin and hard muscle right around the ankle/heel.  It feels like there should be more sliding surface there to give me more room.  

      I’ll have to say that every smashing type of exercise shown here has given me the horse eye, but the heel chord barbell smash has not.  It makes me think that I am some how missing something.
    • 11/16/2013 at 9:33 am #73212
      AvatarAnonymous
      Guest

      They are not the same.
      If you are not seeing change from the barbell mod move onto something else.
      Different mobs are going to work for different people addressing the same issue.
      You need to have someone else do the ball wacking.
      You need to address the cause of the restriction. Have you looked up/downstream of the heel cord?
      You see the issue at the heel cord, but this may not be where the problem originates.

    • 11/16/2013 at 7:00 pm #73223
      AvatarKatie Hemphill
      Participant

      Yeah, like Kaitlin said, if you’re not seeing change move on to another potential solution, and start to look at the bigger picture.

      Pro Episode #21 was a user-request regarding difficulty improving ankle mobility, and the take-away was basically to take a systems approach and start looking beyond the ankle itself. Also, making sure your squat is technically sound and that you’re not lacking any fundamental motor control details would be prudent.
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