You’ll hear plenty of athletes saying things like “I’ve got weak ankles” or “my ankles a bit dodgy”, and I’m no exception. What got me on the road to becoming a Sports Therapist was a series of increasingly severe sprains to my right ankle… actually that’s not strictly true, it really started by running into a wall and breaking my leg! But that’s another story and the end result was a “weak ankle”. The image on the right is what it looked like a couple of days after the last time I sprained it, which was over 10 years ago.
So what makes an ankle “weak”? To put it simply inadequate training, poor rehab and a lack of understanding of the injury and the forces your ankle deals with. I said earlier that it’s an injury that’s not well looked after and I just want to emphasise that I’m not criticising other therapists, Physio’s or health professionals in any way when I say this. When someone seeks advice from a professional they’ll usually get good sound advice on how to treat and rehab the injury.
The biggest issue though is that unless it’s a very severe sprain most of us won’t seek professional advice. It’s such a common injury and surely we can just deal with it ourselves? And there’s always a mate with some great advice on how he sorted his out. In my opinion that’s where the problem is – it’s so common that we think we know how to deal with it.