- Hey there team.
My name's James and I'm here to help you run strong
and run injury free.
Today I'm gonna take you through a very quick
and very effective ankle strengthening routine,
particularly perfect for those of you
who have recently had ankle injuries
and are looking to return to running with confidence
in those ankles.
Now, we're gonna start out with heel walks,
great little exercise to start building strength
through tibialis anterior,
the muscle around the outside of the shin,
that really helps to control the ankle.
You're gonna stay nice and tall, nice and upright,
and you're gonna keep your legs straight,
as you step forwards, simply,
only touching the ground with your heels.
Okay we're gonna work through one minute,
back and forth, back and forth.
Use your hands to create a little bit of balance
and over time, you should feel the front of those shins
start to get a little bit fatigued.
A lot of the muscles that control the ankle joint,
actually sit up in that shin and calf region
rather than being in the foot and ankle themselves.
So a lot of the strengthening we need to do
after an ankle injury is around that lower leg region,
that calf, that front and outside of the shin region.
So, a lot of the exercises we're going to do,
that's where you're gonna feel the effort.
Working through just another length of this,
we're doing one minute heel walks.
Looks a bit silly but boy, can I feel the effort
now down the outsides of the shin.
Now, we're gonna move into one minute of toe walks,
so we're gonna come up onto your toes,
from here, we're lifting toes up towards the shin,
and we're keeping the heels well off the ground.
It's slow, deliberate, it's what we're after
is time under tension for those calf muscles,
it's time holding you in that heel off the ground position,
that plantar flex position.
Again, we're working through for one minute.
Again, it's a follow along video so by all means,
just start out and copy everything I'm doing.
Again, it takes a bit of control.
Takes a bit of balance.
But that's no bad thing for us to be training either
especially after an ankle injury.
Yeah, I can certainly start to feel this now,
in my calves, my heels are happily still high off the ground
and we'll go for one more length.
This is good, back and forth, up and down with the toes,
good, okay, really starting to feel that now,
in that lower calf region, the soleus region.
That's ideal, okay.
We're gonna do one more set of each.
So we'll do heel walks,
again the temptation is to rush these,
and to turn it into a little sport stagger,
but I want you to be upright and slow and deliberate,
with your movements.
Okay, try not to bend forwards.
Try and keep yourself in a nice tall position,
really pulling the toes and the feet up
towards your shins so only the heels
can touch the ground there.
That's good, then we go another 30 seconds,
doing one minute again.
Can feel now, in this second set,
that my feet are wanting to drop.
My feet are wanting to come down flat on the ground
I'm having to fight to stop that from happening.
Okay, and now we'll swap.
Onto the toes.
Last minute.
Then we're gonna move on and do more a balance
and stability focused exercise.
Which is really gonna to start to challenge
a lot of those little stabilizers, both around the ankle
but also up around the hip as well.
Single leg stability is about more
than just ankle stability,
but of course if you've had an ankle injury,
we need to make sure we really do train stability,
so what happens is that sometimes,
especially if you've had a ligament damage,
or significant soft tissue damage full stop,
your ability to perceive movement of the ankle
we refer to as proprioception, gets affected
and we need to make sure
that we can start training that again, so your ankles,
kind of think of it as natural kind of writing mechanism,
and I'm sure we've all had that feeling
where we've kind of half stepped off a curb
or half stepped on a bit of uneven ground
and we've caught ourselves just before we sprain our ankle,
said wow that was close and you kind of,
you almost check, you almost check yourself
like no, no, I'm okay.
Unfortunately, that's obviously not how it happens
every time, that's how we get ourselves in the situation
where perhaps you've had an ankle sprain,
but it's those muscles like your pereneous in particular
that as you're gonna go phew, turn your ankle,
they catch it and they'll help provide that stability
and that righting force to bring you straight.
We can start training those guys now.
So, I'm gonna have you standing on one leg.
Little knee bend on that standing leg
and in that position, I want you to gently clench your butt.
Okay, draw your bellybutton in, engage your core.
Hands together, I want you to make sure
you don't claw your toes as you do this,
we're gonna go big letter A,
big letter B,
big letter C,
D, E, we're gonna do the full alphabet.
F, G, H, you can do this uppercase or lowercase,
I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R,
S, T, U, V, W,
X, Y, Z.
So each one of those exercises,
each one of those letters is obviously a different shape
and therefore requires you to move
in a different pattern as we're moving,
and the bigger the movement of the arms,
so that, is obviously a lot easier than that.
The bigger the movement of the arms,
the more motion your body has to control,
the more your ankle has to stabilize.
After doing that first set,
I can feel really feel the work around the ankle
in the lower leg and again,
that's why it's important to engage your glutes,
engage your core,
'cause the better you can stabilize around there,
the less work your ankle will have to do
or extra work your ankle will have to do
to pick up the slack.
The less you engage around here,
the more it becomes all about the ankle.
So, we want the ankle working alongside everything else.
Good.
D, E, F, G, H,
I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R,
S, we've got one more exercise coming after this.
So stick around, W, X, Y and Z.
Okay so, you can do one set on each side,
fill out a bit or you can do it twice over
on each side if you want to challenge yourself
a little bit more.
From there I want to move into lateral hops.
A bit more advanced, okay?
If you're only just coming back after an ankle injury,
go easy with this one.
But, if you're feeling like you're ready
to get back into running outside and challenging yourself
with various different movements,
this is a good one to work with.
Single leg hops, you can pick a line on the ground,
be it imaginary or real, you're gonna hop
from side to side, side to side.
I want you to land it, think about sticking it
like a gymnast, okay?
So, we're proving that we've got the control
and the stability.
That wasn't as good.
We can do multiple hops or just do single hops.
It's up to you but it's important we hop to the left
and the right on each given foot, we're gonna do 20.
I've no idea how many this is, we'll call that 20.
I can certainly feel that.
And we'll do this one to the count of 20.
... five, six, seven, eight, nine,
... and that's 20.
You can probably see that that's quite a challenge.
I had to catch myself a couple of times there
but lateral movement is really good for our ankles
'cause that's where sometimes you really struggle.
Okay folks, I'd love to know how you get on with this.
Let me know in the comments if this is something
you found helpful and of course,
I'll make more of these videos.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, hit the bell
and I'll see you soon.