Hey Reader,

One of the reasons I called my practice Chain Reaction is because the body is exactly that…a chain reaction. If you’ve seen me, you know one of my favorite PT quips is:

“The culprit is silent, the victim cries out.”

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What that means is the location where you’re having pain is often a symptom, not a cause of the pain. That’s why it’s so important to evaluate the entire body and look at how every joint, muscle, and system interact to get a full picture of what’s causing your pain and how we’re going to fix it.

In the context of hip pain, one seemingly unlikely contributor is often limited ankle dorsiflexion.

Dorsiflexion is the ability to flex your ankle upwards (think pull toes up towards your nose). It’s this movement right here:

We need 10-20 degrees of dorsiflexion in order to progress forward and over our foot when we are walking or running.
​If we don’t have that range, we have to make it up somewhere else in order to keep progressing forward.

One way we can make that up is by utilizing the glutes. The glutes help extend our hip (push off of our foot while walking). If we have limitations in dorsiflexion, we will utilize the glutes sooner and more in order to push ourselves forward.

This results in less rolling through the foot and less momentum, which asks the hip muscles to work harder than their counterparts. When a muscle has to work harder than it should, it can lead to pain in that area. Thus, decreased ankle range of motion down the chain can ➡️ pain in your hip.

So if you have hip pain and your ankles feel “tight”, it’s not a bad idea to begin by stretching your calves. However, if you've read my emails, you know that stretching will only get us so far. My favorite way to address ankle range of motion is through active lengthening, joint mobility, and strengthening of the muscles.

If you want to see what those exercises are, check out (and save) the post I made here 👇

So that's another lil peak into my evaluation process and a quick and dirty explanation as to why it's important to evaluate the entire body if you want better outcomes in physical therapy. All too often I see the field get too myopic when treating pain, which leaves results on the table.

If you're a practitioner, make sure you're evaluating the entire chain reaction. If you're a patient and haven't gotten the results you wanted with PT, make sure your clinician has zoomed out enough to give them all the information they need.

Keep moving, and make sure that ankle's got heaps of mobility,

Jessie

Know someone that would benefit from more fearless movement? Please forward this info along, and have them click here to join my newsletter!

Dr. Jessie Duppler, PT, DPT​
​Owner & Physical Therapist
Chain Reaction Physical Therapy
​www.chainreactionpt.com​
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621 Miller Valley Rd
Suite A
Prescott, AZ 86301
​(928) 379-6390​

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