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
Pose
running website
PoseTech
shop |
