Joel from Flow Physio Co Sutherland chats to us about an easy way to assess calf strength.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey guys. I've recently been seeing a lot of soccer players and runners, and people from other sports who've been coming in with some calf and shin issues.

So I wanted to give you guys a quick little test to have a look at your calf strength, and a way to work on it as well.

So the first one to do is to get into a single leg standing position. Use a wall for balance. And just do some calf raises. Up on to your toes and back down.

So you want to get some nice control there as you're going up and down.

Then test side to side, see how many you can get before you hit fatigue on each side. If it's nice and even, that's really good.

The goal for you would be able to get about 30 repetitions or more.

Second one we want to do, is have a look at doing the same thing but with the knee bent. So coming into this squat position. Same thing, going up and down. So that's a bit more challenging, in this muscle we don't work on so much, but it's called your soleus muscle and it's really important for running.

So have a look at that as well, and have a look at your capacity there. Now, again, if they're not even side to side, or you're not getting that 30 repetitions on each side, that's something to work on.

So you want to work on that exercise, basically going to the point where you're almost getting fatigued, give yourself a couple of minutes rest, and then go again, and do the same thing. You better challenge that muscle to be able to load it a bit and get a bit stronger.