Manual Therapy Techniques For The Peroneus Longus

Today I’ll share with you a quick and easy way to stimulate the peroneus longus.

This particular muscle is regularly overlooked but I come back to it time and time again through my work in the mentorship, private practice and professional sport.

Read on to find out how you can produce good intent through the big toe in a few simple steps.

With an acute ankle sprain whether it is an inversion sprain, syndesmosis or a jarred ankle you need to make sure the patient has good intent through the big toe. If we push off the big toe it will produce torque through the lateral aspect of the leg. If they have protective tone there may be an inability to generate torque. When this happens what we can do is force the system to generate torque whilst reassuring the system that this is safe.

One of the easiest exercises is to get the athlete to push down with the ball of the big toe into your hand. All you are doing is pushing toward the patient’s resistance. This will get an isometric contraction which will be felt in the lateral aspect of the peroneus.

Very often, just by reassuring the system and performing this exercise you’ll get the pro-perceptive awareness back through the peroneus, helping load the big toe and improving dorsiflexion.

If the athlete is feeling pain you can ask them to push up to the point of pain, very often you’ll there confidence improves and actually generate a lot more torque.

This exercise can also be replicated using the little toe for the tibialis posterior, again pushing the little toe into your hand creating inversion torque.

This method is also incredibly powerful as a test. If the athlete can’t physically match your pressure then you know the system needs extra reassurance through the pernicious and tibialis posterior.

Rehab for this is so incredibly simple. Simply ask your patient, when they’re at home and looking to exercise, place their against a wall and imagine there is an orange between the foot and wall. Ask them to squash the orange using force through their big or little toe.

If your patient does not have that intent through the big toe it can often mean the ankle may not be as effective as it should be and you’ll see motor adaptations. Using these methods quickly is vital to making sure those motor adaptations do not take hold.

There it is, a simple and easy way to put loads through these tissues and build that graded exposure. If you want to learn more about the next steps to take with your patient click here.