Ankle Exercises

Often after an ankle injury, there is a need to both strengthen and re-train the muscles supporting the ankle to increase comfort and to avoid future injury.  Additionally, these exercises can improve body position sense (also called "proprioception") which is part of the reflex arc that occurs to prevent injury with any future misstep.

Here are three exercises that are relatively easy to do.

One:  Move the foot/ankle up and down and side to side.  One way to do this is to pretend your toe is a pencil, and in the air, make circles clockwise and counter-clockwise, or write the letters of the alphabet.

Two:  Single limb stance.  The muscles about the ankle and foot can be strengthened by standing on the injured foot.  If the patient's center of gravity starts to move forward, the patient compensate by transferring the weight to the toes to prevent falling forward.  Similarly, if the center of gravity starts to move backward, the patient will put more weight on the heel.  The same compensatory muscles will contract to prevent falling if the center of gravity shifts to either the right or the left.

The advanced version of this exercise is to do it standing on a thin pillow, or a piece of foam, but do this near where you can hold on to something, as you won't have the floor to push off of so readily (and you might fall over!)

Three:  Walk on an uneven surface like the lawn or beach sand.  Gentle forces in different directions will help retrain the body's position sense of where the foot/ankle are in space.