I promised you a video progression on intermediate foot and ankle joint mobility exercises to keep you healthy and help you with your fat loss goals, so here it is. If you haven’t tried practicing the beginner versions yet, please reference this video article here: Beginner Level Ankle Joint Mobility

If you are ready for a more challenging variation to get a little deeper into the soft-tissues, and give your joints a full washing - to prepare you for fat burning activities, then check out this new clip:

Intermediate Ankle Joint Mobility Preview

My recommendations are to do this as an ankle warmup prior to walking, jogging, or bicycling. This is also a great progression to use when you will be doing squatting or lunging activities, or any lower body intensive training at all. It can also be done as part of a morning wake-up to start your body “fresh” for the day. And it is especially useful after training, as a cooldown, to decompress the joints and restore nutrition to those areas which will aid in your recovery. The most important thing is that you actually do it - a little bit of practice everyday will go a long way.

Keep in mind that the intermediate level isn’t necessarily better than the beginner level. In fact, you can receive full benefits from the exercises in the beginner routine if you need to recover any of your range of motion. The intermediate version is a means of sophisticating the movement to allow you to increase your coordination. It is not something to seek after as a goal, but something that you should allow to happen as a by-product of your consistent practice of the beginner level movements. You will eventually notice that your body wants more movement - almost as if your movement is ready and waiting to “grow.” It’s an intuitive process, which is why it is imperative that you are entirely focused on each joint mobility exercise you are doing - completely in the moment with no distractions. This is how training for fat loss should be anyway - an active process that you are consciously aware of.

Try out the exercises and let us know if you need any help!

To your health and success,

John Sifferman, NSCA-CPT

P.S. The beginner and intermediate levels are just the beginning. Scott Sonnon’s Intu-Flow program is a four-level complete system for movement health including advanced and mastery level exercises respectively: http://www.rmaxi.com/products/intu-flow.html