Training Around An Ankle Injury

Training Around an Ankle Injury

Back in September my friend was competing in a XC running race and sprained an ankle. Unfortunately, he’s still unable to run pain free, but there are a number of activities that he can perform in order to maintain his fitness and remain sane.

The number one rule to exercising through an injury is to avoid activities that cause pain. These activities not only slow your rate of healing, but the pain alters your movement strategies. Altered movement strategies persist even after the injury has been healed unless dedicated work is done to fix them. Also, check with a physiotherapist to determine if there are any contraindicated exercises.

Cardiovascular Activities

Firstly, begin with non-weight bearing activities. These include pool running, swimming, and cycling. As the injury heals you can progress to skating and XC skiing in the winter and rollerblading in the summer. Here you’re not elevating your centre of gravity as in running so there’s less force transmitted through the joints.

Strength Training

Again, begin with non-weight or minimal weight bearing activities.

Barbell Glute Bridge

Bird Dog: Increase difficulty by stretching a resistance band from your arm to foot

Overhead Presses: You can perform seated, tall kneeling (on both knees), and half kneeling (on one knee in a split stance) variations

Pushup Variations

Rows: You can perform chest supported rows or dumbbell rows

Chin-Up Variations

Once you can handle some weight bearing activities pain free you can progress to exercises with minimal ankle movement. The trick is to keep the shin vertical.

Romanian or Deadlift: Try the single leg version and then progress to training on two legs as you can’t use as much weight in the single leg version. If you’ve never been properly instructed on how to hip hinge avoid the two leg version as you may end up with a lower back injury too.

90/90 Split Squat: The 90/90 version doesn’t allow the shin to travel forward thereby minimizing ankle range of motion.

Upper Body: You’re probably not limited in choices at this point.

After the injury has healed (or sooner if instructed by a physiotherapist) you’ll need to regain range or motion at the ankle. Failure to do so forces you to compensate somewhere and develop an overuse injury such as at the knee.

As well, you may have lost proprioception in the ankle. Proprioception allows you to know the precise position of your ankle without having to look at it. Balancing on one leg is a simple way of regaining proprioception in the ankle. Progress by standing on something less stable such as a pillow.

It’s disappointing to develop an injury and to be unable to perform your usual fitness activities, but at least you can still stay fit.

Stay fit,

Jonathan Pratt