The main focus in this vlog will be my recent calf injury and the  rehab process which demonstrates how weakness in the chain can lead to injury and how effective rehab and future prehab must focus on the entire chain. This video I made a few years ago to address a common injury in tennis, a rupture of the outer calf calf muscle (Gastrocnemius) and mostly called Tennis Leg among tennis players, gives a little background to what follows:

My Calf Injury

I have had a run of poor results in the singles ladder this winter (2023) which reflects my time out from playing regularly over the last couple of years, and the consequent drop off in my training to play. My basic routine for everyday functional fitness is the 3D matrix exercises which keep me fit and active for life, occasional doubles matches and the rigours of coaching.

However, my routine turned out to be less than adequate for what the Gray Institute calls ‘Oh Gosh moments’ which I encountered in my singles play this winter. I was momentarily proud, as I sprinted to chase down a drop shot just inside the left singles side-line, ripping my one handed backhand cross court for a winner. I hit the ball as it was dropping for the second bounce, with my right foot lunging forward and my follow through decelerating high above my right shoulder. I was further forward in the court and hit  crosscourt from lower than Justine in this clip, but I like to think the execution was not dissimilar.  Text book!

My left calf was less impressed and went into spasm immediately.

Since then, I spent a couple of weeks concentrating on the part of the chain from the foot to the hip, in my workouts,  paying particular attention to the left hamstrings which have been grumbling for a while. I felt ready to play twice in that time but had to retire both times after only a few games. The initial injury was not a tear and the subsequent retirements were also for muscle spasms not tears. I don’t have a clip of the moment of injury, but have the clip of Justine in mind!

My rehab failure working on the symptom.

Although I am convinced of the principles of Chain Reaction Biomechanics, my first reaction like most people, and a large number of therapists, was to look  to the area of the symptom and work on my left hip, hamstrings and calf muscles, all of  which eased the spasm but didn’t resolve the cause, as I found out subsequently.

My light bulb moment came as I was watching a Gray Institute work out webinar titled ‘Functional Training for the Upper Torso’ which will be available soon on their YouTube page,

My rehab success by working on the cause.

I used  and have added exercises from this webinar to my daily routine  as I  begun to feel that the pressure on my calf eased as my upper body range of motion increased. ‘When your upper body moves in space it’s dependant on the legs in many ways, both strength and capacities’. It’s a chain reaction:

This clip does not replicate my movement at the point of injury but you can’t fail to see the stresses that the arm swing would place on the whole chain , particularly the lower limbs which need to stabilise and support the motion of the upper body. The two major differences from the above position would be my  right  stride stance with my right foot lunging forward and my right arm swinging up from the left at ankle height to above my right shoulder.  It’s an out of sync chain with tweaks in the foot position and the low to high rotational arm swing, but it is still a chain reaction and one you can train for by tweaking the motions in the six chain reactions in the 3DMAPS matrices from the Gray Institute.

I used the following clips from two GI webinars.

These clips show the progressions that lead to the arm swing and helped me to develop my upper body range of motion while stabilising  my lower body at first:

 

and then adding a lateral lunge to layer in more power and increase the speed of the chain reaction:

 

The second webinar is worth watching for those of us with medial hip problems as well as showing the type of stride stance I would probably have got into when my calf spasmed:

 

https://youtu.be/Wi3kFBvrYxo