- Aging well is possible and I'm here to help you do it.

I'm Cassy, and for today's Quick Fit class, we'll be working on your feet and ankles to make sure you have good mechanics from the bottom up.

Daily maintenance of the entire body will put you back in control of how you age.

Have a chair handy and a nice mat so you can set your feet free, and we'll get right at it.

[gentle music] We'll be starting with some simple ankle circles.

So just put your weight on your right leg and extend your left.

You can use your chair for stability if you like, but if you can hang out at about 75% without having to put your foot down, then that's the good point of challenging, okay?

An unstable yet controllable situation.

Now go the other way with that ankle, nice and slow.

[inhales] Keep going, and don't forget your breathing.

We breathe in nice and long with a belly breath, meaning your belly goes out, and then we exhale nice and long.

Switch legs.

[inhales] Take your time to stabilize.

Extend that other leg.

Now, your individual joints work to move you within a complex kinetic chain.

Meaning when one joint is impaired, it affects other joints above and below, causing dysfunction that can lead to injuries.

And we don't want that to happen.

That's why we're here, all right.

Let's switch legs.

[inhales] All right, find your stability.

Now inversion and eversion, we don't do this move very often.

Not really one of those moves we go around trying to do, but we can do it.

So let's practice and keep those muscles strong.

Okay, and the other leg, take your time.

[inhales and exhales] Standing up nice and tall.

Because we're doing balance, you'll have to try to just focus on one thing that's not moving.

Okay?

When we move, it requires multiple systems working together efficiently, such as your nervous system, your muscles, and your joints.

It's a lot of things that your brain has to coordinate.

That's why it just takes so much practice and training.

All right, your feet are flat.

Let's just pull up the toes.

These systems are all interdependent.

They work together and they are what forms the kinetic chain, that nervous system, muscular system, and skeletal system.

All right, a few heel lifts, double heel lifts.

And lift, and lift, and lift.

All right, and one at a time.

Nice and gentle.

If this is your first time exercising your feet, perform only four or five reps of each exercise today and increase gradually over the next month or two.

We don't want you to be sore or in pain.

This is about pain relief, okay?

Few more, one and two and three.

All right, now widen your feet a little bit.

I'd like you to put your weight down through your knee, ankle, and right into the ball of your foot.

The ball of your foot is the big pad right below your big toe.

All right, so press that heel down.

Now, as you do this, it's gonna take a little practice so that you make sure you put weight straight down this way and not forward through knee.

So through the hip, the knee, the ankle, and into the ball of the foot.

Grip with your toes, imagine there's a grapefruit or a tomato under that heel and press it down, press and press, other side.

Lift it up, grip, and press, lift it up and press.

Good job, hang in there, press, and this would be one of those that you wouldn't wanna do too many times if it's one of your first times exercising your feet.

Lift, press and press, good, all right.

Two feet again, up and up and up.

Now, let's just hold and then you can walk around a little bit so that you can stay up a little longer and get your heels up a little higher.

Very good, all right, relax, and now very gently, put all your weight on this leg.

So your right leg if you're mirroring me, and just let your other ankle turn to the side without putting hardly any weight down through that ankle at all, okay?

You're controlling it, how much force you're putting down by putting most of your weight into your standing leg.

Good, switch ankles.

[inhales] Okay, just gently to the side.

You can also put your weight on the chair.

Very good, that one feels good.

All right, have your chair.

So for this next move, we're going to do a modification of the typical downward dog.

We have our hands elevated as opposed to on the floor, and just take a little step back.

I'd like you to take a big inhale and let your head come down through your shoulders.

Imagine you're making the point of a triangle with your body, okay.

And pedal those heels, lift one heel and then the other.

[exhales] And as your upper back relaxes, you can walk your hands a little further across the top of the seat, two heels down.

Bend the knees, stretching those calves, and then up on to the balls of your feet.

Pedal again, [inhales] inhale, exhale.

[exhales] Take your time as you feel a really good stretch, don't rush out of it.

Enjoy it, deepen it.

Good, now bend those knees, stretching.

That feels so good down the calves, the Achilles, and then back up onto your toes.

All right, go ahead and stand up out of there.

Good job.

Let's go down into some pliés.

So there's a few rules with these wide pliés.

Keep your shins in line with the feet if you find your knees are caving in, then turn the foot so that your feet and knees go in the same direction, okay.

Come down and down.

You can put a hand on the chair if you need to, lift one heel, then the other, getting the heel up as high as you can, stretching the toes, working the feet.

Our bones respond when we put force down through them.

They build stronger when they're challenged, when the muscles and tendons are pulling against them, they're constantly tearing down and building up, tearing down and building up.

[inhales] All right, now, doubles, okay.

Adjust, doubles.

Two, three, four more.

And last one, hang on.

[short exhale] And up, good job.

Let's stretch out the tops of the feet then.

So just gently push the tops of the feet, the tops of the toes against the floor.

You can let that heel rock left and right.

Good, feels good.

If your toes are very stiff, be gentle, [inhales] but they will loosen up, rock back and forth on the toes.

The benefit of taking the shoes off is that you can get much more movement than when you have them bound in your shoes.

So working on those back toes to the top of the foot.

Shift that heel left and right, so you can get across the pinky toe all the way to the big toe, good job.

And now let's turn and face away from the chair and hang on to the chair back, and let's get your shin and your foot on top of the seat.

And now I'd like you to press your shin against the seat.

[inhales] Stand up tall, feel that working in your hamstring and your glutes and your hip flexors, and it's stretching the top of your foot.

Good job, release.

[inhales] We'll do that again, press, and release, other leg.

Get that up and press, two, three, four, release and go again, press.

Squeeze your hind end, open the hip flexor, pressing that foot at about 70 to 80% of your force and release, good job.

Leg down, shake it off.

You know, I know when your feet hurt, it affects your entire body, physically and mentally.

So I hope you didn't overdo it.

And if you find you are sore, keep moving your feet, ankles, and toes, but very gently without any force to supply healing blood to the muscles and push out soreness.

And because our feet live within a larger system, look for more healing classes right here at pbswisconsin.org/quickfit, where it's my pleasure to create classes that make you feel wonderful because life is movement.

- Announcer: Funding for Quick Fit with Cassy is provided by Greg and Carol Griffin, founders of ElderSpan Management, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.