Ankles Two dropping for you all to continue your hard work in making yourselves as stable as possible. Ankles One had a great response and some really lovely feedback. Let’s keep the momentum going…
This is Germany's Eric Franke showing the traditional 'Bavarian Hello' which requires excellent stability
One of the reasons I’m so eager to put out plenty of useful ankle stabilising content is because of my memories of Sunday League Football. In Britain that’s basically amateur local lads and ladies going out to play football (soccer) on the weekend. Warm ups consist of cigarettes, hangovers and screams from an overweight coach to ‘head the ball’ and ‘open the gate’. I know lots of you can relate.
A memory that really stuck with me was after our opposing team’s resident ‘Dave’ had wiped me out and damaged my ankle in a particularly savage tackle, the lads on my team proceeded to inform me in their infinite wisdom that you’re ‘never the same’ after an ankle injury.
“That’s it Greggy, you’re done. Never the same now. Unlucky to have that at 19 mate.”
Cheers.
Turns out they weren’t totally wrong. After a long, ankle injury layoff, your ankle and all its stabilising muscles tend to ‘forget’ how to work properly. Cue all sorts of sub-optimal compensatory movements and a cycle of injury issues rooted in your ‘fucked ankle’.
What ‘the lads’ were lacking in, (not their fault, you wouldn’t expect a carpet-fitter to have advanced physical therapy qualifications), was the knowledge of HOW to bring yourself back.
If your ankles ‘forget’ how to move then what’s the solution?
Exactly - you need to remind them. You remind them through tedious, laborious, boring rehab work. And that’s the other problem. People drop off with their rehab because the exercises are boring, seem minor and keep you from doing the thing you want to be doing.
Next solution?
Experiment with exercises that you find work for you and design and WRITE DOWN your warm up template. Once they're locked in you can start the work on bedding in the HABIT of doing them.
This is why a lot of the exercises I put out are deliberately the sort of effective, low impact options anyone can fit into their programme/warm up/lifestyle etc. Not necessarily a progressive situation (although some are a little more challenging), just exercises you can pick and choose to work into a logical template that gets you stable, strong and performing better for longer. Hooray.
Note: if you suffer pain or discomfort with any exercise, keep in mind the 1 - 10 pain RPE scale. 1 is no pain and 10 is blinding agony. Never push yourself beyond a 2 or 3 out of 10 when rehabbing.
Now feel free to do whichever of these floats your boat the most (SL = Single Leg):
1. SL Foam Pad/Bosu Balance - x5 1 min per leg or draw 10 semi-circles
2. SL Foam Pad/Bosu Arabesque - x5 8 reps per leg
3. Medicine Ball Bounce Arabesque (with or without foam pad) - x5 8 reps per leg
4. SL Foam Pad/Bosu Partner Or Wall Throw - x3 10 catches or 1 min per leg
5. Square Hops - x3 6 reps per leg
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Email us at barbara@thebrakeman.org