Whether it is a foot, ankle, knee, hip, or back issue, a missed dorsiflexion restriction can be a source of many of your runner’s complaints.  How can such a little thing throw off so much?  Let’s start with the most common compensation for a lack of dorsiflexion. 

Our bodies are smart and figure out ways around our deficits.  We typically begin to collapse inward at our medial foot when we can't move forward in the sagittal plane.  Some of our runners will even externally rotate their foot to get just a little more translation of their tibia over their foot. 

Stop for a moment and try this.  Imagine yourself with limited dorsiflexion as you move into midstance?  How would you get around it?  Now, allow yourself to collapse inward at your ankle/midfoot and you can see it’s a way to get past the lack of ROM.  This is a prime contributor to many of our runners who over-pronate or remain pronated too long during their...