Posts Tagged "ankle sprains"

Ankle Rehabilitation Exercises

Posted by mark in Lower Back pain and your core | 0 comments

Mark Perren-Jones From The Haven Spa and Health Clinic

As promised here are the ankle rehab exercises to get you back to your daily activities. I will assume you have been using the RICE regime for the first 48 hours to decrease the inflammation and now as the tissues begin to form we need to encourage a strong and healthy repair process.

If you have read some of my other posts on injuries you will know that the main reason that injuries do not fully repair is from lack of appropriate rehabilitation. It’s not from lack of ultrasound, lack of bracing, lack of laser therapy, lack of chiropractic help nor is it lack of any other therapy. You must get the injured area moving as soon as possible after the initial inflammatory phase is over (after 48 hours).

So here are some exercises you want to start doing. Make sure that you do all of them so that they are safe and pain free. These exercises are in progressions so you will work up to the ones further down the list. You don’t want to go re-injuring your ankle. Do them 3-4 times per day and if you feel fine doing them, then increase to 6 times a day.

Remember: the key aspects to rehabilitation of a sprained ankle so that you avoid respraining them are strengthening the eversion muscles( the muscles you use when you turn your ankle bringing your little toe towards the outside of the knee-the opposite diction to the way you twisted it) and proprioception exercises ( basically balance skills).

So before you start make sure that you are careful, do each exercise so that it is done safely and in control at all times. These are the basics of the exercises but you can make up your own as well. Challenge your balance skills so that your proprioceptors reawaken and do double the amount of eversion exercises (turning outside of foot up) to inversion exercises (turning inside arch upwards)

• Point your toe down and up 10 times.
• Turn your foot inwards 5 times and then outwards 10 times( as if you were trying to touch your little toe to the outside of your knee-there are 10 of these and not 5 because you want to be strengthening this direction a lot more as it is the area of weakness from the sprain)
• Start riding a stationary bike if you have one
• Write the alphabet in the air with your foot
• As soon as you can, hold onto something for support ad do calf raises. Start with doing 5 and see how it feels, and then if you feel ok gradually build up more repetitions. Make sure when you do these that the pressure is on your first and second toes, you don’t want your foot rolling outwards towards the little toes. You must strengthen the area so do your calf raises with your weight centred over your big and second toes at all times.
• Do calf raises and hold for increasing amounts of time.
• When you can stand on one foot, keeping your weight well balanced. Also try moving the other leg around in the air to challenge the ankle that’s holding your weight up.
• Walk around on your toes keeping your weight over the first and second toes at all times.
• Stand on a pillow and do calf raises on both feet, then on one foot
• Gently hop.
• Stand on one leg with your eyes closed
• Walk sideways, then backwards
• Hop front to back then side to side
• Stand on one leg whenever you can to attain better balance

You may also like to read my article on sprained ankles-the rehab secret and decrease your risk of ankle injuries.

Reduce Your Risk of Ankle Injuries

Posted by mark in Lower Back pain and your core | 0 comments

Mark Perren- Jones from The Haven Spa and Health Clinic

Here is a very simple but effective way to decrease your risk of ankle sprains and strains. US researchers have found that by getting the person/athlete to balance on one foot they could determine who were more or less likely to suffer from an ankle injury. Those who were unable to complete a single leg balance test were two and a half times more likely to sprain their ankles as to those who could complete the test. This is significant as up to 20% of all sports injuries are ankle sprains.

The researchers tested 230 college athletes from American Football, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball. The athletes had to close their eyes for 10secs. While standing on one foot without shoes, with the other knee bent and not touching the weight bearing leg. The athletes were the checked throughout the season for ankle sprains/injuries.

After 14 weeks, 28 ankle sprains were reported and the researchers were indeed able to show that the athletes that could not complete the standing test had a higher degree of sprains.

See my section on ankle sprains rehabilitation for the best techniques to rehab your ankle.

Sprained Ankles-The Rehab Exercise Secret

Posted by mark in Lower Back pain and your core | 2 comments

Mark Perren-Jones from the Haven spa and Health Clinic

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, if you would like more information I will soon be setting up my blog so that you can subscribe and automatically get this information and much more.

The most overlooked part of 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.  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. You can also stand on 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.

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.

also you may like to look at this product for balancing. i have found this to be an extremely good product for rehab.

In a later post I will write a full ankle rehabilitation program.