Leg Exercise - Heel Raises

Commonly Used For: Plantar fasciitis, heel pain, foot pain, ankle weakness, and recovery from ankle sprain.

Video Transcription: I'm going to show you how to do heel raises, which is a good way to strengthen your calf muscles, which is this muscle right here in the back of your leg. It's important to have strong muscles here for any sort of athletic activities — running, jumping, jogging — as well as for creating good ankle stability and preventing heel and foot pain. So how you're going to do this is you want your feet hip distance apart. You're just going to slowly raise up onto your toes, making sure that the weight is over the inside parts of your big toes and not coming out on the outside edges of your feet. So the weight should be over those big toes the whole time, slowly back down. You're just going to raise up and down. Just like that, feeling the muscles working here in the back of your calves. If that's too easy, you can do what's called an eccentric heel raise, where you're going to raise up on both legs and then come down just on one. Up, and down. You can alternate sides as well, if you like. Up, and slowly down. If that's still too easy, you can do a single leg heel raise. Standing just on one leg, again, coming up with the weight over your big toe. Slowly, down. You want to make sure you come all the way up, slowly down. Just like that. And that's how you do your heel raises.