[pct-l] Ankle Strengthening

[Eric Lee]

Bob wrote:
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My ankles are as loose as most people’s wrists.  When I flop my feet around, they have so much range of motion, it looks like I am vigorously waving to a crowd.  I have never walked for more than a couple of hours without twisting an ankle, which is painful, but has never resulted in a sprain.
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My ankles have never been as loose as what you're describing but I've had a long-standing problem with weak and sprain-prone ankles going all the way back to high school.  My problem appears to be a combination of pronounced supination (I naturally tend to walk on the outside edges of my feet) coupled with weak ankle strength from past injuries.  I've done most of my hiking over the years in lightweight leather boots that support my ankles.  The one year I did try to do a section hike in low-topped shoes, I suffered a severe sprain part of the way through and it took me nearly a year to work through the resulting damage and get totally back to normal.

I don't think my boots give me a lot of ankle support so much as they a) help enhance proprioception so I'm more aware of when I'm getting tired and letting my ankles flop around and b) if I do roll an ankle the boots seem to provide some bracing against truly severe injury.  As a side bonus they keep my feet extremely clean which I believe probably helps avoid blisters.

However, over the past year I was able to do a lot of walking on a stretch of construction road built out of 3 inch rock for heavy equipment.  It's a very unstable and challenging surface to walk on but as I did that twice a day five days a week (walking to and from the bus for work), I found that my ankles became a lot stronger and more trustworthy.  I still over-supinate but my ankles seem to have a lot less tendency to fold over for no apparent reason.  Last summer was the first time in ten years that I didn't have some kind of minor ankle-twisting event on a section-hike, which was a great relief.  I'm starting to think about maybe trying trail runners again sometime, though I still need to work up my courage for that.

Anyway, my point is first, that boots aren't all bad and if your body needs them, they can be used successfully.  Don't be ashamed to do what's best for you.  Second, exercises can indeed strengthen and train your body if you do them consistently and over a long period of time.  There are lots of physical-therapy type exercises you could try, or you could just find a really challenging surface to walk on and walk on it a lot.

Eric