The importance of strong ankles is far reaching. It greatly affects the fluidity in your walking stride. A disjointed stride can cause knee, hip, low back, mid back or even neck pain. Many of the people who come to me for knee pain can trace the cause to their ankles. In order to have strong ankles you must also have flexible ankles. Flexible and strong ankles are especially important if you run, play basketball, soccer, football, ride bicycles… or just want to stay active for many years to come.
Here are a few exercises to retain or regain ankle strength and flexibility:
1. The first exercise is called calf raises. Here are a few examples on how you can do these at home:
2. This video includes the exercises of ankle circles and alphabet ankles:
3. Another great ankle strengthening exercise is balancing on one foot:
4. This exercise involves sitting in a chair with your feet flat on the floor in front of you. With you heels firmly planted on the floor, slowly raise your toes up and down.
5. Here is a great stretch for the front of the lower leg and ankle:
6. Keeping your calves flexible are also important to ankle health. You can do this stretch with the back leg straight and then do it again with the back leg bent.
Always check with your doctor before you begin a new exercise routine. If you find your ankles or lower legs are pretty tight and stiff, call your injury treatment massage therapist to help you find relief. Thank you for reading, PJ Harris, LMP. http://www.pjharris.com/
Just a short good day and to thank you for expressing your thinkings in this article. I somehow ran into your site while searching exercise related things in Yahoo… guess I got kind of sidetracked! In any event I’ll be back again in the future to check out your blogposts down the road. All the best!
Thank you helped a lot x) n btw do u know if there’s any problem with my ankle because everytime I m at the gym I m the onli one’s ankle which sound tick n tick while weighting heavy weight. Thanks !