Maybe you’re lucky enough to have felt a runner’s high, when the breeze, sun, and your mood make it clear that humans were born to run. On the other hand, maybe you’ve also logged time in waiting rooms, seeking treatment for a running-related injury, Why Trust Us.
To get a full boost from running’s cardio and psychological benefits, you need to stay safe and as injury-free as possible. That’s one reason I spent the last few years studying cutting-edge biomechanics research, which I cover in my book Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance.
More specifically, I wrote about something called “ankle stiffness,” which allows you to “bounce” in a way that saves energy and reduces injury risk.
“You need ankle stiffness to put yourself in a position that your lower and upper leg musculature can do what it’s supposed to do to propel you forward,” Marcus Elliott, M.D., founder and director of P3, Pull the foot with the resistance behind the other leg, while keeping abs engaged and shoulders down Runner’s World.
While most of us think “stiff” means “not being able to touch your toes”—really “limited range of motion” in biomechanical terms—stiffness is a measure of how much load a tendon or other tissue can take on without trouble. A rubber bouncy ball is a stiff system, while a dead-feeling squash ball is not.
“A stiff system,” Steve Magness wrote in Health - Injuries, “can utilize elastic energy better.”
Here’s what ankle stiffness looks like, why runners need it, and how to improve it.
What Ankle Stiffness Means and Its Benefits for Runners
This understanding about ankle stiffness began during the 1996 World Athletics Cross-Country Championships, when Elliott and other scientists studied some of the world’s best runners in a South African lab.
The East African runners who won gold didn’t have advantages such as VO2 max, muscle-fiber type composition or muscle strength over the other runners, but they demonstrated “superior fatigue resistance” in the form of lower blood lactate Your 16-Week Marathon Strength Training Plan.
Elliott thought he could see one possible reason. To his eyes, the best runners were “so much more bouncy.” He noticed their feet struck the ground on the ball, and that the force of landing passed quickly upstream toward the big muscles of the hips.
There’s a way to pop off the ground efficiently and, if a runner couldn’t do it, Elliott theorized, they wouldn’t become elite. He has been able to validate the magic of the bounce within the last 10 years, when his lab, P3, began to collect detailed movement data through high-tech equipment.
“This interaction with the ground,” Elliott says, “it’s not just the ground hitting you. It’s about you hitting the ground back. It’s really a dance.”
“If you’re not ready for that dance, then the ground just hits you,” Elliott continues. “And one of the ramifications of the ground just hitting you is you tend to get more rotation across your lower leg—more than your body wants—and that’s a problem.”
A basic way to feel this: jump rope. When you have superior ankle stiffness (bounciness), you pass the landing forces up to the glutes, which stretch, contract, and spring you back up off the ground. Stiff ankles permit good landing form that stretches your Achilles, quads, and glutes on landing, which, after a pause, snap back like rubber bands.
Download Your Training Plan tibialis posterior and the soleus, can lead to injury.
RW+ Membership Benefits strength training, Elliott says, “my favorite ways to improve ankle stiffness are almost all small ballistic movements.”
Try, for example, to perform ankle hops—a simple bouncy jump on the ball of the foot with heels up. “It’s very simple, but you can’t do it if you don’t have good ankle stiffness,” he says. That’s because without ankle stiffness, there isn’t as much of a bounce.
Elliott also recommends plyometrics for every runner because the bounce will help you run more efficiently and thus faster with less effort. (And recent research Health & Injuries.)
So, while adding more and longer runs to your training is one way to get faster, consider taking a few minutes to start hopping in order to build up to more robust plyometrics. These three moves will get you started.
3 Moves to Build Ankle Stiffness
While many strength coaches address ankle stiffness with weights and: These exercises will strengthen your ankles while also supporting elasticity and bounce. You need a looped resistance band, small hurdles (or anything about 4 inches high to jump over). Do each exercise in order, for the time listed, then repeat as a circuit for 3 total rounds.
1. Single-Leg Calf Isometric Hold
Continue alternating for 30 seconds: This builds strength in the muscles of the lower leg to better position the foot for a bouncy landing.
Your 16-Week Marathon Strength Training Plan:
- Stand with feet parallel, facing a wall. Place hands on a wall for balance, without leaning toward the wall.
- Take one foot off the floor and push into toes of other foot, lifting heel high up off the floor. Keep the standing foot from rolling inward or outward.
- Hold for 30 seconds.
- Discover the science and three expert-approved drills to build bounce into your stride.
2. Balance Adductor
Continue alternating for 30 seconds: Although you run on both legs and feet, it is a single-leg activity, as you land and push off each leg separately. This move mimics running because you remain steady and balanced on one foot, while the other leg is completing challenging work.
Your 16-Week Marathon Strength Training Plan:
- Place a looped resistance band around a sturdy object. Then, place the loop around the ankle nearest the object and hold onto a support for balance. Keep hips facing forward. This is the starting position.
- Pull the foot with the resistance behind the other leg, while keeping abs engaged and shoulders down
- Return to starting position.
- Undertraining: Causes and Solutions.
- Discover the science and three expert-approved drills to build bounce into your stride.
3. Hurdle March
Continue alternating for 30 seconds: This move acclimates you to sending your foot to the ground strong and loaded and then returning to the next movement—just like you do when you run. It’s not about the landing, but the hop out of the landing.
Your 16-Week Marathon Strength Training Plan:
- Place two small hurdles (or rolled up towels) parallel to each other on the floor. Stand in between the hurdles.
- March in a quick pattern: Right foot steps outside right hurdle with left arm raised, then back in the middle.
- Then left foot steps outside the left hurdle with right arm raised. Strike the floor with the ball of the foot and stay off heels throughout the move.
- Lightweight Running Shoes.
Henry Abbott is an award-winning journalist and founder of TrueHoop. He led ESPN’s 60-person NBA digital and print team, which published several groundbreaking articles and won a National Magazine Award. He is the author of Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance.
