Tom Gellie teaches calf raises on the balls of your feet, using a triangle of contact formed by your big toe tip and the balls of both toes. Start with 10-second holds at hip-width stance, squeezing your knees back and engaging your calves, quads, and glutes. Progress to 20 seconds, then try single-leg for harder difficulty.
Chapters
Okay, balls of the feet posterior chain exercise. Use the wall with your fingertips for a bit of just extra balance. So if you can do it without the wall, great, but just use it for a bit of extra balance and stability. You're going to go up onto the balls of your feet, and you're going to try and make sure that you maintain even contact across the transverse arch. I like to think of the front of the foot having like a triangle of support. So that's the end of the big toe, the ball of the big toe, and the little— the ball of the little toe. So that kind of makes this triangle of support on either side of the foot. You're trying to find those two points, triangles, Stand up, hip width apart. Find those two triangles. Now squeeze your knees back this way as hard as you can. This should engage your calves quite firmly and your quads quite firmly. You're then going to pull this part of your leg back as well using your glutes. So you're going to feel like you pull back and in towards the center line of your body between your two heels as hard as you can. You should feel like you're getting taller and taller each time. Then bring your eyes up and picture a straight line from your head down through your back into your hip joints, through your knees, and then the, the legs are now kind of sitting on top of the heels. So that's pushing the heels this way. Up here is pushing straight down on top of the heels, which is pushing straight into my two front triangles. So, up, up, up, up, up. Give it everything you got. Even pull your arms down a little bit, your elbows down into the same two front triangles. Let go. So you're working on holding it um, like holding it there for endurance. So work on 10 seconds and then going up to 20-second holds. Just keep cycling your awareness through the two front triangles, working your way up the body, up the body, up the body, up the body, up the body, making everything straight. The next step you can do to challenge this would be on one leg. So you can rest this one here and just work on that front triangle over the left. Everything engaged. You won't go for as long here because it's much harder. Squeeze the knee back. So you can see it, it's, it's not here, it's back. Both sides. And, uh, that's it.
