Ankle ligament recovery.

[orichiu]

So yeah I tore a muscle in my ankle and im trying to recover right now.
They taped it up and I've got some excersises to start working on. Im building up to get my ankle strong enough to stand on my 1 foot again.
I'd love to hear about similar stories/ how you dealt with it, and more important what helped you getting it strong again.
<3 Yannick

[nightak]

My left foot is quite big for about a week now. I hope it's nothing serious. I go to the doctor for scans tomorrow :ss

healup soon bro!! <3

[Phil D]

in the title you say its a ligament injury, but then you say its a torn muscle..?

[joepaxton]

YANNICK NUUUU

Argh that sucks :sad: hope you get back to strength soon!!
I got my cast off today though man! So I'll be starting rehab with you :tongue:

[orichiu]

in the title you say its a ligament injury, but then you say its a torn muscle..?

Im sorry man, I don't know the exact difference. :punched:
Its one of those muscles that go diagonal over your ankle !

[orichiu]

YANNICK NUUUU

Argh that sucks :sad: hope you get back to strength soon!!
I got my cast off today though man! So I'll be starting rehab with you :tongue:

Yess !
Good to hear the cast is going off man.
What is your estimated time for recovery?

[Phil D]

Im sorry man, I don't know the exact difference. :punched:
Its one of those muscles that go diagonal over your ankle !

ligaments connect bone to bone, tendons connect muscle to bone. Both require different rehab protocols

[A_Wilhelm]

I think you mean ligament, because they're what stabilizes your ankle and what typically gets injured when you sprain it, the muscles you have in your foot are only small and mainly for moving your toes and stuff.

2 years ago I ruptered like every ligament in my right foot apart from the one between fibula and shin. As far as I know all these ligaments just repair themselves (they don't heal again, but there develops scar tissue which then does the job the ligaments had before)

So aslong as you don't rupture the one between fibula and shin in which case you would need a surgery which is apparently not the case.

The problem is just, it really needs time and it fucking sucks. When I had it I couldn't even put my foot below heart height for almost 2 weeks, because no matter how many painkillers I took, the bloodflow into the damaged ankle caused an unbelievable pain ahaha. So yeah I could basically just sit around and holding my ankle at shoulderheight all the time, which really sucked ahaha. after that I had to wlak on crutches for 1 months, because also I RICEd it the swelling lasted forever.

during that time (starting after the first 2 weeks where I just RICEd and hoped for the pain to go somehow away) I went to a physiotherapist a few times a week for deep tissue massage, which really helps alot for the recovery, so if you don't already do that, you could consider that.

when my ankle got better I still saw the physiotherapist for stabilization- , strengthening- and mobilization exercises, although the mobility was pretty ok already because the physiotherapist worked passively on that while doing the deep tissue massage. And at the days where I didn't go to the physiotherapist I worked on these things at home for myself ofcourse.

for mobility just work on up and down motion of your foot, like pulling your toes all the way up to your shin where your goal is to be able to do ass to grass squats (without the weight, just the range of motion matters) again, and push them all the way away from your shin where your goal is to be able to have the front of your shin and the upper part of your foot in one line/180°.

For stabilization all kinds of one footed squats (without weight) or just standing on one leg is great, you can start doing this on normal ground, then a towel or something, a really soft mattress, and then move on to one of these if you have somehow acces to it

https://www.csmtc.com.au/shop/images/SISSEL_Balance_Board.jpg

to make it harder you can do different exercises with your other leg which is in the air, or with your upper body.

also standing on the balls of your feet is great for both, stabilization and strengthening.

for strengthening you can also do alot with one of these

http://www.training-zollikofen.ch/images/Theraband_Ganzkoerper_01.jpg

like for example shown in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKMy8hiuGnY

or you can just do things like put your one foot on the toes of your other while you're sitting on a chair or something, and push it down, while you pull your other foot up and slowly let it come up and so some sets and reps and stuff etc.

you can also put your foot directly next to something stable and push it against it to the side (try to rotate your foot, but the whole exercise is static of course because the obstacle doesn't move. this works for inward and outward rotation.

here are some of the exercises described
http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/Handouts/anklesprain/anklesprain.html

both these exercises are basically the same as the stuff with the rubberband.

I did this the way I described and I could do normal sport without as much risk as tricking after 2 months again, and could trick after 3 months. both with braces ofcourse. But it only lasted that long because the swelling took 1 fucking months to go away for some disturbed idiotic reason, so If your swelling is already going away, that would be awesome because everything will go faster. Because you can't really do much apart from deep tissue massage and a bit passiver mobility training as long as it's swollen.

So yeah for me it took 3 months till I could trick again, but that doesn't mean that it was nearly healed by then, because ankle injuries really need time. If the ligaments are completely rupture dit takes up to 9 months for the scar tissue to develop and become strong enough to effectively work as your new "ligaments". I had a friend who refused to wear braces long enough, and guess what, he ruptured it the same way again, just because he didn't wait long enough.

I myself think my ankle felt relatively normal after about 1 year after the injurie. So if your injurie isn't far worse than mine (which is hard to know because I'm ofcourse no doctor and you didn't really say much about the injurie, all I wrote was considering a ruptured ligament) you can expect to be able to trick again in 2-3 months without problems. But you shouldn't expect it to be fully healed again by then and give it time etc. I would suggest braces for this purpose, because I'm a big fan of braces and they work really well for me. And I would suggest to wear the atleast the first 6-9 months after the injurie for the reason I mentioned.

I'm using one kind of these

http://www.lohmann-rauscher.de/media/archive/4078.jpg

then some tape around it, where you go diagonal like a 8 around your foor and make sure to go really close and strong directly underneath your knuckles or whatever you call them (the bones sticking out to both sides of your ankle).

and then one of these

http://www.sport07.de/bilder/klein/Sport-ShopprodukteBild110996.png

and if you wear that stuff tight enough, it's basically impossible to sprain your ankle, and I mean impossible. before that I had like 2 -3 ankle sprains a year, for 5 years or something, even though I wore braces, but they weren't strong enough) now I hadn't a single anklesprain for over 2 years.

the thing with the normal sport braces you get is, it's more unlikely to sprain you ankle, because the hold you foot in the right position to the ground (as opposed to the wrong, tilted position your ankle normally gets while in the air when you're walking, running, jumping, tricking etc, and if you only hurt it a little it helps, but if you injure your ankle they don't help at all, eyerything just ruptures like you weren't wearing braces at all.

and for everyone saying they're bad, they're weakening your ankles, and they're ruining your knees, etc...

they can't weaken your ankles if you don't wear them 24/7. wearing them during tricking just means you aren't strengthening them during these few hours, biut that doesn't mean you can't strengthen them when you're not tricking.

and yes, they're slightly bad for your knees, in terms where the cartilage of your knees is worn of a little little faster than it would have been anyway. And I have no knee problems at all. Many people get cartilage damages with 40 anyway and if you wear braces you may get it with 38 instead of 40 if you're prone to it, It's easy to fix with a surgery where you're out of sports for approximately 3 months per leg, and are totally fit again afterwards, both my parents had it and my brother had it at age of 12 or something (other reasons than ankle braces of course) and noone has problems with it.

I always wear my braces during tricking, and most probably ever will, because I see no use in risking an injurie. But everyone has to decide that on his own. ofcourse they limit your perfomance, and you can't jump as good, but not to an extend where it really hinders your tricks.

Way to make a long ass post that no one reads, but I just wrote everything that popped into my head, and I hope some of the stuff might helps you atleast a little and you're soon back to tricking! I hope I didn't totally underestimate your injurie and you have some super fucked up injurie which is far far worse than mine was and I was just talking shit, but from the little you said I expect it to be a ruptured ligament.

Lots of <3!! and best of luck and heal up soon man!

[Phil D]

how did you do it? The most common sporting injury is an inversion sprain (rolling your ankle so the sole of your foot faces inwards)

[Marodi]

I've done ankle ligament damage 3 times now and im still recovering from the thrid. I just keep it elevated heaps, put ice on it for the first few days, and then when it starts to feel a little better, i start to put heat on it to reduce the swelling.

I also just rotate my ankle lots to gain its flexibility back, tippy toe walk lots to gain its strenght back and do lots of walking. When i walk i tend to stay off the path and find really unlevel ground, its good for its core strength.

Then when its feeling pretty decent, which it is now, i start to ease back into tricking, and still do the exercises above until it feels perfect again :)

[Aiden Bloodaxe]

http://www.trickstutorials.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59575

[Ashtar]

I got really close to doing a pistol squat the last couple days, I managed to get down (and not sitting) but stalled on the way up. But then I bashed me knee on this stupid metal machine so wouldn't try it with that leg for a bit.

The hardest thing is keeping your back straight, it's hard to move forward with hip flexion instead of spine flexion.

Doing it on a wobble board would certainly be interesting.