yogabook / explorations / supinating effect of the soleus

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last updated: 30 May 2024
name: supinating effect of the soleus

• Classification
• Contraindication
• Effects
• Preparation
• Follow-up
• derived asanas
• similar asanas
• Diagnostics
• Instructions
• Details
• Variants

Instructions

1. Perform the soleus stretch on the block with a lot of pressure on the foot and the heel remaining on the floor and observe whether the bent knee moves inwards, the lower leg turns into exorotation in the knee joint.

Details

1. Due to the supinating effect of the soleus, the greater the tendency of the foot to increase supination, the greater the degree of countermovement to the action of the soleus, i.e. to the plantar flexion. The foot must therefore dorsiflex more and more with increasing supination or at least, depending on mobility, less pronation.
   Since the forefoot in this exploration is pressed onto the block with a lot of pressure, it must be considered a punctum fixum. Therefore, the knee deviates in the direction of less pronation of the foot, towards medial. If you now try to correct the knee in a lateral direction, the tension in the soleus becomes noticeably higher and the heel may lift off.
2. This exploration demonstrates how important the flexibility of the soleus is, when performing activities or sports with wide dorsiflexions of the ankle with flexed knee joints. Depending on mobility, even climbing stairs can result in exorotation of the lower leg in the knee joint each time the foot touches down on the next higher step, which causes shearing forces, which are particularly damaging to the menisci as the amount of rotation changes during movement, because the forced exorotation of the lower leg decreases again with extension of the knee joint. In addition, the knee moves under a kinetic load with a very large partial body weight.
3. The above observation cannot be applied to the extended or largely extended knee joint, as, on the one hand, the gastrocnemius is the muscle that restricts dorsiflexion, and on the other hand, the knee joint is more or less completely in final rotation anyway.
4. With good flexibility of the soleus, the described effect is much less pronounced.