How a Stiff Ankle Can Lead to a Stiff Hip

Ankles get stiff, particularly in dorsiflexion. This can have all kinds of consequences, but one that isn’t talked about is the relationship between ankle and hip.

When your ankle is stiff and missing dorsiflexion, the feet turn out, like pictured about. That’s because to walk, you need about 10 degrees of dorsiflexion. If you don’t have that, as you run out of range of motion with the trail leg, the foot will turn out to get away from the stretch felt in the calf. The body will innately do what’s easiest, that’s just how we’re wired. 

Over time, and thousands of steps, the hips will adapt to the position you put them in. With the foot turned out, the femur is externally rotated. The muscles that control this motion in the hip, will adaptively stiffen in that position. Whatever a muscle does, it limits the opposite motion. For example, the hamstrings bend the knee, and limit knee extension. For this example, the external rotators will limit hip internal rotation. Limited hip internal rotation is one of the most common dysfunctions I see in most of my patients. This can become a problem for rotational sports such as hockey, golf, tennis, etc. 

When the body is missing a particular range of motion, it will find what it needs at the neighboring joint. In this instance, the spine. So if you have back pain from your sport, and you find you are missing hip internal rotation, check your ankles. They may be the root of the problem. 

So what do you do about it? Get range of motion back in both the ankle and hip. For the hip, I like to do this: 

For the ankle, stretch the muscle like so:

And mobilize the joint like this: