How To Tell If You Have A Soleus Muscle Strain In The Calf

If you're suffering from a soleus strain, don't wait to seek treatment! Soleus strain is a common injury that can cause pain and discomfort, and is often treated with surgery. In this video, we'll discuss the causes of a soleus strain and how to treat it with conservative treatments like stretches and exercises.

Don't let a soleus strain keep you from enjoying your life - find out how to treat it with stretches and exercises in this video! After watching this video, you'll know how to identify and treat a soleus strain in a safe and effective way.

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#calfstretch #calfstretch

[Performance Place website article excerpt] Taking walk breaks may not seem like the perfect answer to calf cramps, but it will assist in a few ways. First, if the reason you’re having calf cramps is because of poor programming or peaks within your training program that you’re not conditioned for, adding walk breaks or stretches at a decreased pace within your mileage can help build a tolerance.

I recently read a whole article in a bodybuilding magazine (LINK TO COME) about building your functional capacity. Click through the link to see the entire article. The short version is this: functional capacity is your neuromuscular system’s ability to keep good form for a certain duration of time, if we’re talking about running.

Perhaps you might notice during hill workouts that your calves cramp more?

This would be an example of your neuromuscular system not being ready for the load of the hill. Adding in threshold training to prevent calf cramps can greatly improve both your race times and your comfort level.

Warm-ups are just about like anything else–they can be good or they can be bad. I suggest to my patients that the primary goal of a warm-up should be to get the blood moving.
Other goals in a warm-up will depend upon a runner’s individual needs. Some runners need more trunk stabilization, others need more hip mobility, and some of them need thoracic spine mobility. If it were up to me, no two runners would warm-up the exact same way.

When I say you need to have a more complete warm-up, I mean one that enables your body to perform better as a unit. You can go back to what I said just a few lines ago: if you have poor trunk stabilization, you have a high probability of hip drop, which leads to more lower leg injuries and calf cramps.

Lateral lunges and air squats aren’t the perfect warm-up for everyone. I’m simply saying that we should all be more responsible by looking at what our body needs before we create our warm-ups.

Myofascial release is a great way to improve local mobility of the lower limbs. Notice I didn’t say the calf…why? To be honest, in the sport of running, we want the lower leg (calf/ankle) to have a high degree of stiffness so we can get off the ground faster. In turn, this decreases the risk of injury.
When we consistently loosen the calf muscles, we also decrease our potential to spring off the ground. Using a skilled manual therapist to find focal locations of adhesions is the best way to add soft tissue work/myofascial release into your weekly routine.

Can you do it on your own? Sure, but clinically, we often see that there is a minimal effective dose. Too much is bad for your gait, and too much in the wrong spot is also bad for you. So, yes, you can attempt on your own, but doing so could make you slower and more injury prone.

Some of you are probably thinking, “But it feels good!” Ya, it does–trust me, I get it. But alcoholic beverages “feel good” too, but if drank in excess or without eating, then I’m sure you won’t be feeling good for long. I think we can do it selectively.

There are other ways we can increase our range of motion at the hips which will save the calfs. Listen to this podcast for more on this.