(rock music)
- I'm Dr. Ryan DeBell
from The Movement Fix,
and for this Movement Fix Monday,
we're gonna look at the big toe.
We talked last week about
how end-range knee flexion
can be limited by the big toe mobility.
And this week, we're gonna
look a little bit more
specifically at how to get
that big toe moving more,
especially when there's
pinching in the big toe.
Okay, so let's talk a
little bit of anatomy
in the big toe first.
We have a joint right
here, and that's called
the first metatarsophalangeal joint.
We'll just call it the first MP joint.
And when we go into big toe extension,
or big toe dorsiflexion, we
have to have a good amount
of range of motion right here.
And depending on the
source that you look at,
it could be between 60 to 100
degrees is considered normal.
And the first stretch you can do,
and we looked at this last week,
if you don't have pinching in this joint
because there's one very
universal principal,
and that is, we don't
wanna stretch a joint
when it pinches, because
we're not stretching anything.
We're usually actually pinching something,
and we don't wanna push into that.
So we always wanna try
to get rid of pinching.
If you can tolerate it in your big toe,
and you can just stretch it like this.
This is a really great way to
get that thing moving more,
because most of the time in
life, we don't go this far
into big toe extension.
So if we do have pinching here,
we can do a little self
joint mobilization,
where we're actually trying
to get the joint to slide.
So if you think about this bone right here
and this bone right here,
they meet up at a joint
sorta like this.
And so if this is the
tip of your big toe here,
when it comes up, this
has to slide like that.
And if this isn't
sliding, then we can pinch
at this little spot on the joint here.
So if you look at what I'm
gonna do here with my big toe,
I'm gonna grab it like this,
and I'm going to pull this way.
So I'm grabbing here, I'm gonna pull.
This thumb is going to go right here.
So I'm pulling, I'm
going here, and as I'm,
what I'm going to do with this
thumb is I'm going to push
this way with the thumb.
So I'm gonna pull with my
foot, or pull my big toe,
push through there, and I'm
gonna do about 10 reps of this.
And this is actually mobilizing
the joint with movement.
So we're just gonna go 10 reps.
I'm not working really hard here.
And if you really feel, you
can feel the line of the joint.
If you take your big toe and
move it around like this,
you can feel where the joint is.
You wanna be on this side
of the joint as we do this.
So I'm just gonna go 10 reps, like that.
Now what I can do is now
that I have a little bit
of more range of motion, I wanna use it.
And we can use it in one of two ways.
We can go right here, back to what we did,
and see if that improves it.
We also wanna look at the
active range of motion,
and what we can do for
that is if I think about,
hey, I just freed up some
motion in that joint,
I need to teach my brain how
to control that new motion,
what I can do is take my big toe that way
and then pull it up.
I'm gonna use my finger here
and apply as little pressure
as possible while I use the
muscles to pull my big toe
as far that way as possible,
and then I'm gonna relax it.
And then I'm gonna pull as far as I can.
So I'm using the muscles.
I'm trying to use my own
muscles to pull the toe,
but I'm using these fingers to help me,
and I'm going as far as
I can, as far as I can,
as far as I can, and then
relax, and I'll go again.
And so, you can do reps of that, 10 reps.
And then let's go back to
the joint mobilization.
And we can go another 10 reps here.
Now I have the foam roller
here, because sometimes
there is some, there's
a little bit too much
tone or contraction in
the muscles that go into
the big toe, and it lives
primarily right here,
deep below your calf muscle.
And so what you can do is take the roller,
get on there, pull your ankle this way,
and then you can move your big toe around.
And we're just trying to
get a little bit of the tone
of that muscle to release.
There's no way, we're not gonna like
break anything apart
here; we're more trying
to get the muscle to relax.
So you can spend a minute or two there,
then go back to this mobilization.
And then we can go back to this
active, isolated stretching,
assisted stretching, where
we're using our own muscles
to pull it as far as we can
with a little bit of assistance.
So give those things
a try on this big toe.
We need, again, big toe,
this range of motion,
because we have to run, we have to jump,
we have to do all those
things, and there needs to be
a substantial range there.
And if you're missing this,
you're going to gain it
somewhere else along the chain,
and wonder why you have
knee pain or hip pain.
So work on that; make sure you
don't stretch into a pinch.
Sometimes there can be
bone spurs at that joint.
So if you work on it, work on
it, work on it, work on it,
and it's still pinching,
maybe go get it checked out.
Next week, I got some
good, a really great video
I wanna show you guys, so make
sure you tune in next week.
Subscribe to the YouTube channel.
Follow us on Facebook,
Facebook.com/themovementfix
and Instagram @themovementfix.
See you guys next week.
(rock music)
