Big Toe Mobility: Essential Foot Flexibility for BJJ

Hey guys welcome back this is Joel Kresge, Sport Physiotherapist. Today we've got a great exercise. It's not going to be for everyone but for the people that it's for it's going to make a massive difference in both your game and your body. What we're talking about here is toe flexibility.

Now that sounds so ridiculous that you actually have to care about that but anybody who's broken their toe or has really stiff toes will tell you that it's so hard to do so many of the drills that we do in jujitsu and it's also hard to kind of generate pressure either in top of side control or even from turtle. Now what I'm getting at here is we really want to talk about this big toe flexibility. Now when I look at someone in the in the clinic I'm looking for essentially a 90 degree bend back of the big toe so a right angle of the big toe relative to the rest of the foot. Now sometimes people will only have that when the rest of their foot is plantar flexed or pointed and then their big toe can come back and if they can only do it there but they can't do it when the foot is bent like this at 90 degrees then likely the restriction is actually the plantar fascia and we'll get into some of those things later on when we're talking about plantar fasciitis but unfortunately plantar fasciitis is kind of thrown into the mix anytime we have pain or stiffness in the foot and it's really not justified.

We want to be very very specific when we're talking about diagnosing or even treating any kind of injury we don't want to just give it a vague umbrella term. So anyways when we're looking at this it's really important that we get this flexibility back because so much of what we do in jujitsu is up on our toe. A good example like I mentioned before is when I'm in turtle and there's obviously certain scenarios where I might want to be on my toes like this again if I'm in a turtle and I want to then bring my feet inside almost to what's called like a Buddha turtle but what about my toes it's really important that I have this because I can now generate forward pressure this way and if I'm just here it's really hard to I'm just gonna take my glasses off here for a sec is that if I'm in a turtle and I go to put my head down it's really hard to generate force from the top of my feet and there's a really good video online from Pritt Mickelson and I highly recommend it the guy really knows his stuff and he kind of goes back and forth either on your toes or on the your feet but I think ultimately he's someone who's willing to sort of accept that there are certain scenarios where you should be on either but one thing he will not argue about nor will I is that I can't generate force upwards or forwards when I'm on my toes like this so this is a really bad habit and you'll see beginners do this in jujitsu where they'll sit on their feet like this in someone's guard and then when they go to stand up they have to go there and then they come up and they stand or pass or do whatever but if I'm already here I have multiple reasons why this is better one if they push me back this way I can push into them if I go to stand up I'm readily ready to go and if I want to go into a combat stance I can go right here and this one has got forward pressure if I'm down here I'm actually you can see I actually sit backwards like this versus here I'm up tall and ready to go forward so if we have a restriction in our big toe again either from an injury or we're just unfortunately born that way we have to start getting that back and it is not something that is going to happen overnight but the problem is that if we don't get that bend back what will happen is and you'll see it in the gym is if people don't have the ability to bend their foot and toe back this way they start to turn their foot outwards and so a good example I'm not sure this I can get this on the camera but if people are say basing inside control and they can't get up on their toes you'll see them turn their foot outwards like this and not only is this hard on the knee and the big toe but we actually lose again forward pressure so when I'm here I can drive into someone versus here it's really hard to drive into them and definitely this is no good so there's two ways that I want to go over how we can get this flexibility back in the big toe the first one is very simple we just grab over top of the toe and pull back like this as in most things in jiu-jitsu we want to have the foot flexed as we pull back on the big toe because that's the position that we live in we're not doing ballet and we don't want to be here there's might be certain scenarios where we're here but I'd say 99.9% of the time we always want to be doing stuff with that foot flexed and pulling back like this now if you feel like you're going nowhere with this keep at it okay it will take months for some people if at all because again there's some people who have had injuries that are catastrophic in that area but again if you don't work at it what does nothing do nothing so first one is doing it with your hands pulling back like this and just do it while you watch a show and you know it will come now the other one that we want to do is ideally we want to be sitting in this sort of modified Seiza position again a lot of people will do this in classes you're sitting there watching your instructor don't be sitting like this right this is encouraging a bad habit and we never want to do that so we want to encourage now even if I'm here and I can't quite do it while I'm watching my instructor what I can do is sit like this right so my toe only goes back say 60 degrees I'm sitting like this and then I add some forward pressure as you get the mobility back from repetition and doing it over and over and over again then we start to drop the knees down and down okay and again you can try this either in a side control position on your knees you can try it on a side control position just on your toes which obviously adds more force to that but again I think if we're doing jiu-jitsu this move is important with your toes on the mat and pushing and it's also important that if I'm hooking someone that I have this extra little hook and I can tell you I mean I have fairly large feet and I play kind of like a butterfly game and I can tell you more often than not my big toe ends up saving the day more than I would ever guess and it's just kind of funny because people will comment it's like you know it feels like a hands grabbing their leg or their knee or whatnot it's just my big toe that has an extra little curl so it's a good thing to practice it's a good thing to help prevent ankle toe injuries and it also helps out our knees when we're in these positions for a long time again I hope you guys enjoyed this video please be patient with this one I cannot stress that enough this one takes time but I promise you will pay off in the long run for your jiu-jitsu game as well as your longevity within the sport especially when you get to be an old guy like me thanks again I'll see you on the mat soon see you later