A commonly overlooked part of pike and pancake flexibility.
If you're like me, you want to increase your pike and pancake flexibility.
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Let me guess.
You spend a lot of time stretching your hamstrings, glutes, obliques, quadratus lumborium (QL's), traps and spinal erectors.
And maybe you've read my post on "How To Start Training Core Compression Strength."
I get it, these are the commonly used exercises for pike and pancake gainz and exactly what I’d been focusing my training on.
But, I'd often feel that something was missing.
When I was performing deep pike stretches, like head to toe pulses, I'd often feel tightness in my calves and not my hamstrings.
That's when I decided to start adding in more direct calf stretches.
After spending a few months stretching my calves a couple of times a week I notices that my pike and pancake range increased and the feeling of tightness subsided.
The calves are powerful muscles that we walk around on all day. In our day-to-day lives we rarely take our ankle into end range dorsiflexion, which leaves the calves short and tight.
For a good five years of my life I trained and competed in marathons and triathlons. Year of running certainly left an impact on my calves.
I've also noticed that a number of my online clients who struggle to perform deep squats, or seem to have an imbalance in there squat, often have tight calves (or calf).
An easy test for this is the knee to wall calf test.
Can the client keep the foot flat on the floor and push their knee over their toe, on both sides.
If so, do you have the same range of motion in both ankles?
A structural imbalance between the left and right ankle can cause knee, hip and/or lower back pain. It's something that needed to be addressed before we start performing loaded bilateral movements like barbell squats.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about structural imbalance in this post, but it's something to be aware of. Nobody is perfectly symmetrical, but we want to do our best to balance out left and right to decrease the chances of injury.
How do the calves impact pike and pancake flexibility?
Aesthetically, we plantarflex (point the toes) when doing a pike or pancake. Doesn't that mean the calves are in a shortened position, not a lengthened position?
Without trying to sound like a fitness geek, the calf muscles cross both the ankle and the knee joint.
The two main muscles of the calf are the gastrocnemius (crossing both the knee and the ankle joints) and the soleus (crossing the ankle joint).
In both the gymnastics pike and pancake the legs need to be straight.
Tight calves can limit knee extension.
We often see gymnastics skill seekers struggling to keep their legs straight when performing movements like L-Sits, Toes-To_Bar, Skin The Cats, Pistols and Press to Handstand. Tight hamstring and tight calves are a common problem that prevents us from locking the knees and making our gymnastics movements look pretty.
In makes logical sense to stretch the gastrocnemius to increase knee extension because the gastrocnemius crosses the knee joint.
But what about the soleus?
The gastrocnemius and the soleus come together above the heel and form the achilles tendon.
You could argue that they are actually one muscle with two seperate heads and a single insertion.
Straight-knee calf stretches target more of the gastrocnemius and can often be felt behind the knee and at the top of the calf.
Bent-knee calf stretches target more of the soleus and can often be felt at the back of the ankle and the bottom of the calf.
Bent-knee stretches target the achilles tendon.
By performing both straight-knee and bent-knee calf stretches we can increase the overall length of the calf and improve both knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion.
The achilles tendon is the strongest and largest tendon in the body. Hence, it's the hardest to stretch and ofter require a more specific approach than most muscle and tendons.
Isometric hold are the most effective way to train calf flexibility.
This can be achieved by doing long isometrics for 90-120 seconds, or by adding pauses for 3-15 seconds at the bottom each rep in a calf raising exercises.
Don't be surprised if you have sore calves for a few days after first introducing these isometric holds and pauses.
Unilateral calf stretches are often far more effective than bilateral calf stretches because they allow us to place more weight and focus on a single leg. If you have access to a standing or seated calf machine, bilateral stretches can be effective as you have the ability to add significant load.
Without a calf machine, it's best to use single leg variations.
Often when performing calf stretches we relax the ankle and just hang out in dorsiflexion. This is OK, but its not as effective as actively contracting the antagonist muscles (anterior tibialis) and pulling the ankle into dorsiflexion.
Training the tibialis muscles is an essential part of increasing ankle flexibility.
The stronger the tibialis anterior muscles, the more force we can generate to pull the ankle into dorsiflexion. When performing standing core compression exercises it's essential to contract the muscle of the anterior chain, including the anterior tibialis, to effectually pull deeper into the range.
Often gymnastics flexibility seekers are unaware of the anterior tibialis power and they don't contract these muscles during core compression training. Exercises like Pike Stretch, Standing Forward Fold, Overcoming Isometric, Tibialis Raise can often be a real eye opener.
Another common mistake is only performing calf stretches with a neutral foot position. It can be super helpful to experiment with the foot turned in (more emphasis on the lateral head of the calf) and with the foot turned out (more emphasis on the medial head of the calf) as this targets different muscle fibres in the calf.
I suggest you experiment with all three positions to see which on offers the best line of stretch for you.
You also want to recheck the best line of stretch every 3-4weeks to see if the area of tightness has changed. As you start to increase flexibility in the medial calf, the next layer of tightness might be in lateral calf.
Whatever you do, don't overlook ankle strength and flexibility in your gymnastics training. If you're working on your pike and pancake flexibility and having trouble straightening your legs, add in some straight leg and bent-knee calf training.
Don't be surprised if you experience some serious calf DOMS.
Happy calf training.
