Ankle Injuries – How to Avoid Spraining Ligaments and Tendons in Your Foot

Basketball is a sport with very high rate of injury. Because the game itself allows limited contact between players, injuries often occur from being elbowed or shoved. But, the most incidents come from ankle spraining due to either switching directions or landing on someone else’ foot after a jump thus twisting the ankle.

[My favorite sport. I have torn ligaments in both my ankles playing ball but I still love the game.]

The ankle is made for mobility so restricting that with a high top shoe is going to bring trouble somewhere else. It’s better to injure the ankle than to tear something in your knee. So, the solution is not taping and bracing the ankle, but strengthening the foot’s tissues – muscles, tendons, ligaments in order to prevent spraining.

This Video Shows A Few Different Ways To Strengthen The Tissues Of The Foot


[Dick Hartzell explains how to use elastic bands to strengthen the ankle in the exact pathway injuries occur so it can resist next time.]

The clip gives a long and detailed explanation. Building ankle strength and flexibility, however, is like all great things actually quite simple.

There Are Two Positions For You To Put The Band On

If you put it on the arch of the foot, you then can flex your foot side to side and mimic the exact movement that sprains your ankle. Now, by strengthening this pathway by working the muscle on the side of your calf, you are going to enable the ankle to control this range of motion. All the tissues in this area will toughen up and spraining incidents will decrease.

The second position for the band is the ball of the foot. This allows an up and down motion to fortify the calf muscle and the Achilles tendon – the one on the back of your foot just above your heel.

Knee Positions and Muscle Activation

When the knee is bent, the work is done by the soleus muscle. This is the one just above the ankle and below the diamond- or ball-like muscle of the actual calf.

On the other hand, when the leg and knee are straight, the working muscle is the grastrochemius muscle. This is what people refer to as the calf.

At any rate it’s a good idea to strengthen you feet and avoid or decrease injuries in the future.

[This is another video basically explaining the same thing.]

Image: theogeo