Have you ever suffered from an ankle sprain, and it felt like it was taking forever for it to recover? Most of the time when an ankle sprain occurs, the rehabilitation process doesn't actually address the best ways for recovery. We see a lot of ankles placed in a brace, then people still continue to do the activities they love.
The problem with this type of rehab is that the foot and ankle are made to move, and by not properly addressing the ankle sprain, it starts to lose its mobility and stiffens up. I see a lot of people in my clinic who's ankle and foot don't function properly due to an ankle sprain that wasn't treated correctly.
Ankle Sprains can Lead to Other Dysfunctions
When the ankle and foot doesn't move the way it is supposed to, then we see issues develop elsewhere in the body due to compensatory patterns. If you are a really active person, this could be a major cause for knee issues or back issues.
In this video series, I show you some of my at-home process for recovering from an ankle sprain quickly. I get people back to nearly full strength under a week all the time. By Day 6, I was back onto the mountain slopes snowboarding like nothing happened.
Shownotes
- [1:20] Using my own injury to show a rehab process that is different than traditional protocols
- [1:55] My goal was to get my ankle back to normal within one week
- [3:55] I sprained my ankle snowboarding on Mt Rainier
- [5:40] The sprain was basically a double ankle sprain, meaning it was an inversion and eversion sprain
- [7:40] If you have an injury to the foot or ankle, you can guarantee there will be compensations in other areas of the body
- [8:30] Day 1 was about getting motion in the foot so it didn't lose range of motion
- [9:45] I started Day 2 with standing balance reaches, static walking movements, calf stretches, and knee circles
- [14:00] Day 3 I did lunges, small lunge hops, elastic recoiling, BOSU balance reaches
- [16:45] On Day 4, I did similar exercises as Day 3, except I did the round side of the BOSU instead of the flat part.
- [18:30] For Day 5, I took Day 4's exercises and used weights to add an increase in the load. Then I did side to side elastic recoil to fully go into the end range of motion of the ankle to simulate a sprain
- [19:30] Day 6 was the first real test on the slopes, and everything went very well. Day 7 I played a soccer game and there were no issues with the ankle during the game
