This damn single leg calf raise!!!
Posted on March 10th, 2010 by placervillemadman
How long until any of you were able to do a full single leg calf raise on the repaired leg? I mean a good one without holding on to anything where one could cheat. I can get about an inch off the ground and it is infuriating me.
on a good note I got up to kirkwood for two more ski days last weekend and took my Bike out for a rip yesterday. Also knocked out some plyrometrics on the legs…but WHERE IS MY SINGLE CALF RAISE!! 
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but after lunch fatigue started to set in and I should have called it a day about 5 runs sooner…at that point it was just keeping the wheels on the wagon. 
Placer….
Good to hear you’re out tearing it up…..I bet it feels great to be doing fun stuff again.
I’m at 16 weeks today…and I tried the single calf raise with my Surgeon. I was able to raise myself only a quarter inch off the ground. But he says I’m on track to doing better, he said it just takes time.
Just hang in there!!
I’m 20 weeks 5 days post op and I still can’t do it. If I stand on both feet with my weight on bad foot I can do them, but if I hold my could foot up off the floor, the bad leg won’t even think about it. My concern is more with the thickness of the tendon now, about 1 1/4 inches wide. Also the top of my scar is stuck tight to the tendon and I’m still quite stiff in the morning when first putting weight on my foot. Are you still doing PT, I stopped the first of the year do to insurance and not doing a very good job with my 3 exercises daily. I guess I keep thinking it is just going to get better on it’s own, but not so sure anymore. Paulette
Hi Paulette,
I wouldn’t worry too much about the width of your tendon, the details of the scar (as long as the incision is sealed up), or morning stiffness. The width and stiffness will get better with time, and the scar issue is only cosmetic, (and massaging loose it might help). You really should work on that calf strength, though.
One exercise that is fairly “one size fits all” is to stand up, put your weight on your good foot, and get your injured heel up in the air as much as it will go with the ball of that foot still on the ground. Then slowly shift your weight from your good foot to your injured foot, and fight to keep that heel up. When your calf can’t hold the weight, keep the weight there and “fight” the heel’s descent to the ground as hard as you can. Do enough of this to make your calf tired the next day, but not the day after that. Take that next day off, then repeat the following day. On the off day, do some light exercise, perhaps seated calf raises.
One particular advantage to this exercise is that it works the calf at the plantar flexed end of its range, which is usually the hardest part to get back to normal strength.
When you can keep your heel up with all your body weight on that foot, just do lots of walking around up on your toes, first on alternate days, but later every day as you get stronger.
Just some unsolicited PT advice,
Doug
I like Doug’s exercises, and elsewhere I’ve posted some details of the ones I’ve gotten from my Physio, too. Including seated heel lifts, with weight. (It’s probably on my own blog pages.)
But what do I know? I’m a member of the same club as the rest of you! After about 13 weeks (and no surgery), my leg can now do just about everything it used to do, EXCEPT the “push-off” at the end of a walking stride, and a 1-legged heel raise. I’ve been really close — or so it feels — for maybe 3 or 4 weeks.
On the other hand, I also have a cautionary tale, from 8 years ago, when I tore my first AT and had it repaired surgically: On the first day when I could do the “push-off” at the end of a walking stride (about 4 months post-op), my Physio told me to do some 1-legged heel raises. When I told her it was too hard, because I couldn’t do anywhere near 8 “reps”, she responded “Just do as many as you can”. Stupidly, I did, and cranked off 3 or 4 (grunting and groaning) before I ran out of gas.
It was literally A MONTH before I could walk properly again. And I had the first real PAIN of the whole rehab, right where the AT meets the top of the heel.
So good luck to all of us in becoming ABLE to do our first 1-legged heel raise — just don’t translate that into actually DOING a bunch of them when you’re just barely able to!
Almost 23 weeks, not happening,
Thanks everyone…This is yet another reason I love this site. It provides for a quick reality check. I will just keep on plugging away at my exercises.
JustPeachie- I am still doing my PT just not through Kaiser. Their PT office pretty much sucked and the $20 co-pay was getting old when I could do all of the exercises at home. I am quite a freak when it comes to my schedule though…I don’t miss any sessions. With a history of hockey, football, rugby, and lacrosse I learned the value of PT when coming back from an injury at an early age. If the PT was worth it I would have kept going.
I am a home grown Canadian living in the states since fall of 93 and my physio experience back in Canada was much different…ultrasound, electro-stimulation, laser therapy, massage, and range of motion / resistance training. Here in the states it was a little massage, exercises and that was it so the decision to go it alone wasn’t a hard one. Even my surgeon recommended it. On the other hand though, the attention I received from my surgeon here was better than anything I had back in Canada. He wanted to schedule me for surgery the day after a saw him. My bro -in -law back home had to wait 4 months to get his ACL repaired.
Nice exercise Doug…I am going to mess with that one in my office right now!
Thanks for the warning Norm…no need to regress on this thing for the sake of being stubborn (which I have been told applies to me but I don’t believe it
)
++++vibes to all.
Interesting view of the US-Canada border. Here in Toronto, I’ve gotten a lot of ultrasound, electro-stimulation, laser therapy, massage, etc. from my physio from the start (which was at 2 or 3 weeks). Only in the last couple of weeks has he been putting me on the exercise machines, and expecting me to show up an hour early to wear myself out before he works on me.
Usually I’m scrambling just to get to see him on time, so that part hasn’t happened. Today I had my 3-month follow-up with my “surgeon” (remember, there was no surgery!), in the same clinic, and I was going to do some 1-leg seated calf raises with a 20# weight on my knee. It’s a bit simpler than using a bucket full of water at home. But I forget.
Unlike you, madman, I’ve never really gotten the bug for doing a bunch of sets of a bunch of reps of the same exercise. I love playing sports I love, and I love getting the “burn” and the sweat and the exhaustion of having played crazy hard and crazy long. And I know that isolating and working weak muscles, over and over and over, makes perfect sense. And I know that my Gastroc and Soleus (calf) muscles need lots of work. But doing sets of reps is SO BORING! So I’m dancing from foot to foot, turning Doug’s exercise into a dance, jogging in place, bicycling, etc., etc. but not exactly doing multiple sets of multiple reps of many pure calf exercises. I hope my leg forgives me. (The other one did, 8 years ago.)
One of my fave memories of “the burn” is the time, a couple-or–3 years ago, when 3 of my beach-volleyball buddies and I rented a court at a place we’d never played before (INDOOR beach volleyball!). The place had 5 volleyball courts, and it was a Saturday afternoon in the winter, so we assumed we’d see a bunch of other folks who played at the same level, and we’d end up playing together, as a team of 4.
But no! There was only one other court in use, and they weren’t nearly as good as we were. So we played 2-on-2. And played. And played! For three hours straight, with breaks no longer than maybe 4 minutes for a swig of water and a granola bar, we kept scrambling to win each point, in one of the world’s more brutal games!
It’s probably worth mentioning that the other three were all in their 20s or 30s, and I was maybe 61. Highlight of the day for me, during one of the brutal and close games, in our most competitive and balanced alignment, toward the end of the brutal afternoon: My 30-something teammate completely “pooches” a routine play, instant loss of a point. Huffing and puffing, he apologizes to me: “Norm, I’m sorry, but I just needed 5 more seconds to catch my breath, before you served the ball!” (Now THAT goes into the mental scrap-book!
)
7 months after ATR and still only able to raise heel 0.5″!
General fitness (cycling, running etc) A-OK though. My physio tells me it can take up to 12 months for a good raise!!!!!
Sorry to say it, but I’m glad to learn i’m not the only frustrated non-raiser here!
All the best.
I’m 2 years and have about 1 inch. It is still improving though.
Just checked the site (less regular now) to find this covnersation.
I’m just over 8 months (36 weeks) and can just about get to 2″ with single calf raise.
I was told to do some walking on the balls of my feet/tiptoes including up and down the stairs, and then walking onthe heels.
But guess time and perserverance are what really help.
Yeah, like Sam: about 2″ high single heel raises now - still not as high as the good foot. I started at 5 months or so, and it took a LOT OF practice! First up on 2 heels then placing more and more weight on the injured heel.
My first post in months - was reminded of you guys by a colleague at work telling me her husband did his ATR playing Ultimate frisbee on the weekend.
I’m a few weeks ahead of Sam at 9 months post-op and also managing about 2″ heel raise, but was at about 1cm heel raise or less only a month ago. I slacked right off the targeted exercises in early December because I wasn’t noticing the achilles being a problem any more. I got a reality check in January when I went in a 2-day mountain bike race. Apart from my fitness level not being up to scratch, I also found that with sustained efforts I couldn’t keep the power output even between injured and non-injured side, and consequently kept having to stop and stretch my lower back which was going into spasm.
So I started doing some targeted exercises again, and found that while strenght wasn’t a problem at neutral or in doersiflexion, plantar flexed strength was rubbish. I’m doing a modified version of doug’s exercise above.
Basically I give my bad leg as much assistance as required (but as little as possible) to reach FULLY plantar flexed then lower down as slowly as possible staying in control. The extreme end of the range is still very weak, but improving gradually.
Using unassisted lift only, strength at the lower end was great but even after a couple of weeks of hard work I wasn’t managing to lift any higher.
Really have to get it sorted out properly as it looks like I’ll be on the summit of Kilimanjaro for my ATR anniversary!
I think I’ve just figured out, and posted, a few answers to two questions that have been puzzing me: (1) Why it’s so much harder to do a good 1-leg heel raise, than it is to do a perfect (long, fast) walking stride — don’t you have to lift your whole body weight on the ball of your foot do EITHER?!? And (2) Why the TOP END of a good 1-leg heel raise is so incredibly much harder to do than the beginning.
It’s partly at achillesblog.com/normofthenorth/2010/05/06/and-the-results-are-in/#comments and partly in a comment on Mike357’s blog that’s linked there.
BTW, after 5 MONTHS, I’ve been walking perfectly for a while (1+ months?) but still can’t do a real 1-leg heel raise. I can now lift my heel up in the air on one foot by rolling my knee forward, but not straight-kneed.
Meanwhile, I’m having a blast bicycling around town, sailing a 15′ sailboat, running casually from time to time, and on a recent ski week in Whistler in heavy, warm, DIFFICULT snow! Fortunately, enjoyment of normal life — including a few non-
AT-critical sports!! — is NOT dependent on the ability to do a good 1-leg heel raise!