ANKLE SPRAIN

It is quite a frequent injury in runners, and not only the beginners, or amateurs, but in elite, as well. It happens during running on an uneven surface, on trails full of rocks, roots, hidden holes and at a sudden change of surface.

Most often ankle sprain goes laterally – outside, damaging ligaments and tendons of the foot, which could take a runner out of activity for quite a long time. In severe cases it could last a month or longer. But the most bizarre thing about ligament and tendons is that they keep this memory for a very long time and could give up, sometimes, at the most inappropriate moment.

So the question is how to prevent this kind of injury in your training and racing. Recovery from this injury requires a specific procedure; exercise, which needs to be described as a separate topic.

Prevention of the ankle sprain has two aspects: technical and anatomo-phisiological. The first one includes mental and physical (what to do) parts. The second one is a question of tissues and their functions.

Lets start from the easiest one - tissues and their functions. The major thing about them is that tissues (bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments) are well developed to handle your own body weight during support on the ground. Handling includes not only interaction with the normal ground (even surface), but also with some deviation from this (uneven terrain).

Basically we are talking about strengthening these tissues through specially designed exercises. The list of these exercises goes beyond the scope of this article and will be presented in a book on injuries that is in the works. Some exercises can be found in "Flexibility" and "Elasticity" chapters in the Pose Method of Running book.

It’s needless to say, that the exercises alone are not enough to prevent ankle sprain injury. If a situation, wrong positioning of the ankle, happens during a run, the strength of tissues would not be enough to get over this. Loading during a dynamic support would easily over-exceed tissues capacity and an injury will become unavoidable.

So what would be a solution? This is when we have to return to the first and most important aspect: mental and technical one. Basically it’s about what to do when the situation of ankle spraining happens and how to be prepared for it?

The first thing is to be ready to discontinue the support and take your body weight off the loaded foot. Pull the foot from the ground immediately, faster, than under normal conditions. This would help you avoid over loading your foot tissues. Yes, it is quite difficult mental and technical tasks, but it’s the only thing, which could keep you out of trouble.

Unless you have a seriously sprained ankle where a special course of treatment would be required, I recommend doing the above mentioned exercises instead of resting. I do not recommend using ice or medication.

Dr. Romanov