Sprained Ankles-The Rehab Exercise Secret
Mark Perren-Jones
I am going to give you a leg up on how to learn the best rehabilitation exercises for sprained ankles. This will greatly reduce your risk of spraining your ankle again. Some studies have shown a decreased risk of up to 80%! One of the major problems with people who sprain their ankles is that they tend to re-sprain them again and again and again. This is because the person does their well-intentioned rehabilitation but they do not address the most important factor. You need to get the neuromuscular aspect of the ankle unit functioning properly to keep from tearing the ligaments. And here’s the secret!
Firstly, I want to remind you that as with any injury the most important thing to do is to get it moving after a couple of days rest. The first two days are spent icing, elevating compression bandage etc (RICE regime) and then you must get your joint moving. The last thing you want to do is keep it wrapped up and not allowing any movement. This is one of the worst things that you can do for any injury. You want to move the joint in a controlled pain free manner. I have written more on this in other articles on treating injuries.
The most overlooked part of ankle rehabilitation is to do with proprioception. What is proprioception I hear you ask? These are receptors that tell you where your body is positioned in space. For example, if you lift your arms out to the sides and you close your eyes you don’t need to look at your arms to know where they are. The proprioceptors give you the feedback telling you exactly where your body is in space. When it comes to a sprained ankle these little guys go walkabout and don’t give the body its feedback about what is happening with the ankle. So, if you twist your ankle and the proprioceptors are doing their job normally then they will tell the body that the ankle is about to go too far and the muscles will hold the ankle in place before it gets sprained. Without these functioning properly, there is no feedback mechanism and it’s another sprain for the ligaments of the ankle. However, it’s easy to remedy, you just need to know how to retrain the proprioceptors.
Step 1: Have a chair or something to hold onto close by, you are going to need to balance and don’t want to re-injure yourself. Be careful. Stand on one leg and try to hold it for 10 seconds. You want the pressure on your big and second toes. If you don’t do this you begin to roll out towards the little toes which is the area where you start to roll the ankle in the direction of the sprain. If you can do these pain-free and is fairly easy then build up the amount of time. Do these three times a day. By doing this you will increase you’re balancing skills which is exactly what your ankle needs. When doing this look ahead at something to help keep your balance. Don’t look down at your feet.
When you can do this comfortably for 30 seconds try doing it with your eyes closed. It’s a whole lot harder.
You may also like to roll up a towel and stand on that as well. It’s slightly more challenging for the ankle. Or you can stand on a pillow. Al of these challenges your ankle more and more. You can also stand on one foot and reach out for things or bend up and down. The more you work and challenge the ankle the better. You can even stand 10 feet away from someone standing on one foot still and throw a ball back and forwards. Another fun thing to do is stand on one leg whilst you do the dishes or clean your teeth.
If you do this daily you will reawaken your proprioceptors and have them working as they should once more. You will strengthen your ankle, have better proprioception working for you and have a much smaller risk of re-injuring your ankle.
Note: These exercises are to be done as a final part of your rehab routine. Before these exercises you must do specific stretching and strengthening exercises starting from day 3. Remember, no matter what your injury is you need to get the injured area moving as quickly as possible to encourage a strong repair-it is the most important aspect of injury rehabilitation! Obviously, it must be done in a controlled manner, safely and correctly.
Also, there are many ankle rehab exercises (especially on the internet) that do not encourage a strong repair and actually overstretch your ligaments-you do not want this!
If you would like more information on ankle sprains, rehabilitation or any other pain or injury you may have please feel free to call Mark Perren-Jones 6415578