Understanding and Managing Calf Muscle Injuries
Calf muscle injuries are super common in both athletes and active individuals. They often result from sudden, forceful movements such as jumping, sprinting, or abrupt changes in direction.
Anatomy
Your ‘calf’ actually consists of two main muscles, the gastrocnemius, and the soleus. A calf strain can occur in either of these muscles. There are some important differences between the two when it comes to injury and rehab.
Gastrocnemius strains: Can often occur during forceful movements. Think activities such as sprinting, jumping or changing direction.
Soleus strains: Usually will have a gradual onset of pain. It might feel like cramping or tightness. Often occurs during activities like long distance running.
Despite these differences, calf strains are often just a result of doing too much too soon!
How to Solve It?
Initial management of calf injuries follows a typical pattern we use with many injuries. Further down the track, we are able to do some more specific things to help the calf come back stronger than before!
Initial Phase:
- Pain management
- Gait normalisation
- Active movements → exercises such as pumping your foot up and down, or some seated calf raises
Once Pain Reduces:
- Strengthening exercises → we usually begin with body weight calf raises
- Manual therapy → for comfort!
- Balance exercises → to help regain good control of the calf muscles
- Gradual introduction to higher intensity movements > think jogging and jumping activities
Return To Sport
- Sport specific exercises → change of direction, speed development
- Power and plyometric exercises → jumping & hopping
- Return to running > start short and slow and build up
Preventing Long Term Issues
The calf muscles often get a bad wrap! You probably know someone who ‘has a bad calf’ or who ‘always does their calf’, but it doesn’t have to be this way!
Calf strains do have a high re-injury rate. This is usually due to not completing a full rehabilitation program.
To give yourself the best chance at a full recovery, it is so important we build the capacity of the calf back up. We do this so it can deal with all the demands it needs to!
A good way to test the capacity of your calves is to put them to the test! Feel free to have a go yourself!
Keep an eye out on our Instagram to see the team here have a go at the single leg calf raise test!!