hello my name is dr. Robert fennel with hand and foot pain calm and today I'm going to show you how to treat a calf muscle injury let's talk about why you might have developed a calf muscle injury one of the most common reasons is repetitive stress or even direct trauma to the calf muscle you may stand or walk a lot for your your job maybe you rut walk on rough terrain or uneven surfaces or up or down hills a lot that can definitely cause strain and stress to your calf causing it to become injured maybe you have certain Footwear choices you use as well to such as women with high heels that can also cause a calf injury if your if your calf muscles are not properly conditioned now what are some things you can do to reduce the pain in your calf number one apply ice for the first 72 hours after your symptoms appear you're going to put ice directly over the point of pain that's going to reduce swelling and inflammation in that area and really help to get the ball rolling on correcting this calf problem the second thing you can do is apply biofreeze biofreeze is a prescription type medicinal relief that you can get from your chiropractor it has menthol as an active ingredient and what it does it has an analgesic effect where it's going to really knock out the payments can reduce that pain to give you comfort so you can enjoy a day of activity without having the continued aggravation the next thing you can do is stretch the calf there's a couple stretches we're going to talk about today that's really important to really heal any calf condition the first one is general runners stretch so you're going to have both feet spread apart one is going to be in front of the other with the bad cap to the back you're going to be standing in front of a wall with both hands positioned on the wall now as you lean forward into the wall you're going to move your hips forward and keep that involved need lock straight until you feel a stretch in your calf muscle hold that stretch for 5 to 10 seconds and you never want to rock or bounce you always hold this very slow and controlled and then push away from the wall to relax after a few seconds do it again you can do this for three to five repetitions and you can do this every day the second stretch is going to work on the deep muscles of the cap known as the soleus muscle group now you're going to put your foot at a 45-degree angle on the wall you're going to bend your knee in this one versus keeping it locked and as you move your knee closer to the wall you're going to feel that deep stretch in your calf area this really helps to stretch the cap and get it to relax after 72 hours you're going to start applying moist heat to the cap area we used ice for the first 72 hours then we switch to moist heat if you ice this muscle is going to bring a lot of circulation and blood flow back into that musculature now you can put a moist heating pack or pad directly on the calf and i like to use moist dry heat is fine but the moistness the dampness helps to transmit that the heat energy deeper into the muscle now after the day 3 Marcus hit you're going to start to do some resistance training toe raises as one of the most popular ways and easiest way to start to work the calf musculature and strengthen it simply stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and you're going to raise up on your toes to your heels in the air you're going to hold that for about five seconds or so real slow and controlled then go back down to the ground do that for five to ten repetitions and you can do that daily as a part of your rehabilitation for your calf muscle and then the finally the last thing we're going to talk about is how you can actually get the best relief for a cast a calf muscle problem usually there's some type of misalignment in the heel or ankle thats related to the calf injury chiropractic manipulation on the heel and ankle area and also the knee area can be very effective on taking the tension and stress off of your calf muscle giving you long-term relief if this is a problem you've had on going again I'm dr. Robert Finnell with hand and foot pain calm and I want to thank you today for watching this video on how to treat a calf muscle injury