8 Min. Foot & Ankle Mobility | Follow Along, No Equipment | Improve Your Squat | DAY 7 #OER

8 Min Foot & Ankle Mobility is a short mobility routine from Julia Reppel to take care of your ankles. I love all of Julia’s mobility routines but I especially love the ones designed to hit small, usually neglected joints and muscles. I have damaged feet and ankles. 16 years ago a drunk driver hit me head on and I have plates and screws in my heels. Because of this my ankle mobility is limited. I definitely do not spend enough time working on that. But short, effective routines like this help a lot. In fact, this morning I combined this routine with another of her short mobility routines for the muscles and joints in the wrists, hands, neck, scapula–other small neglected muscle groups–then finished it off with a longer full body mobility routine. Between the 3 workouts I worked every joint in my body–literally! And in just under an hour. Fabulous recovery day workout.

Each exercise is done for 50 seconds followed by a 15 second transition. There is a timer in the lower left hand corner of the screen counting down the intervals and transitions. During the transition Julia demonstrates the next exercise. There is a progress bar in the upper right hand corner counting down the workout time as a percentage.

8 Min Foot & Ankle Mobility is 8:12 minutes. Equipment: fitness mat and something to hold onto for balance; Julia is holding onto the wall.

1. Side to side shifts (inversion to eversion) (stand and shift feet side to side–outside of foot to insole)
2. Flexion > extension (hold onto something for balance, raise one foot and point and flex foot); when there is 20 seconds left the exercise changes to inversion > eversion (scooping) (one leg is still raised and extended, swivel toes/foot from side to side in a scooping motion)
3. Repeat #2 on opposite leg
4. Half kneeling dorsiflexion > plantarflexion (kneel on one knee, other foot is on mat, torso leans over knee with hands on knee to add resistance, raise and lower heel)
5. Repeat #4 on other leg
6. Seated inversion to eversion (sit on mat with legs crossed, top ankle is on opposite knee, using hand move foot side to side–same motion as #1 but done with hand)
7. Repeat #6 on other foot
8. Walk the dog (in downward facing dog, pedal your heels)

For more info on Julia Reppel and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.