Bill Hartman 10:44–13:17
Yes, yes, yes. You do have other elements of this, such as the width of the Achilles, the amount of tension on the Achilles. You can see the asymmetry in somebody that would be more ERD on one side, where the center of gravity is further forward and there's less weight on the calcaneus on that side and you'll see the increased tension through the Achilles which will give the appearance of a narrow wing, right, because as you pull the Achilles long it will narrow and therefore its attachment on the calcaneus will narrow as well. So that's also in play. And so if you had somebody that is maybe not as far forward, they've got a little bit more of the anterior orientation of the entire foot where the arch is really, really low, but they're not fully loading the forefoot like some people do. You'll see a wider representation as well. So there's a lot of stuff that can give you a visual representation of that. The position of the fat pad plays into this as well. You get somebody that is very, very ERD, not a lot of weight on the heel, the fat pad's not going to spread out nearly as much. And so you've got a lot of stuff going on there that can give you the appearance. The cool thing about the calcaneus is that you can grab it and you can compress the soft tissue around it. And so you can actually feel some of the turn, especially when you get somebody that's got the really hard ER twist. The foot's so ERD they've got a lot of concentric muscle activity in the bottom of the foot, so the arch is very, very high. You can feel the turn when you grab the calcaneus. So there's nothing wrong with doing that back in the olden days when we used to draw lines on the calcaneus and then try to draw a line on the midline of the calf.
calcaneus assessmentAchilles tensionERD (excessive rearfoot dorsiflexion)fat pad positioningfoot asymmetry