Your shins control how far your heels stay down in a squat. Instead of stretching calves, strengthen the muscles on the front of your shin by standing near a wall and lifting your toes up, then lower them. Move farther from the wall to make it harder.
We have a group of muscles in the front of our shin called our anterior compartment. They help us do this motion, which is called dorsiflexion. If you feel like you have a hard time getting into your squat without raising your heels up, or if you feel like you're kind of restricted when you walk as well too, oftentimes it's because we don't have the active ability to get there. You can stretch your calves all day long, but you can also work on getting the muscles that actually put you in that position to work as well too. So easy way to do that, find a wall, bring feet out, and then we're just going to bring feet up and back down. We want to try and bring all 10 toes up, not allowing feet to invert, just up and down. Up and down. Make it harder, get further away from that wall. Try it out.
