If your ankles are stiff or tight, performing some ankle mobility exercises can help improve flexibility in the joint area. Let’s have a closer look at some of the advantages of ankle mobility exercises and a few effective exercises to try.
Perhaps you’re an athlete or just someone who wants to move with more ease—either way, ankle mobility exercises can help! . The exercise is open for anyone to perform.
Definition of Ankle mobility Exercise
Ankle mobility exercises are movements that enhance the flexibility of your ankles. This is important because your ankles help keep your body from falling. When your ankles are flexible, it helps you to walk, run, and jump more efficiently. In addition, ankle mobility exercises help stretch and build your ankle joint’s muscles and ligaments.
Ankle Mobility Exercises: The Benefits
If you want the joints in the ankles to be flexible, then you need to work on your ankle mobility. Here are some of the benefits of performing ankle mobility exercise:
- Better balance: The ankle mobility exercise allows you to do activities that require you to maintain balance, such as walking, jogging, and jumping.
- Prevents Injury: Healthy ankles can reduce a person’s chances of suffering from an injury, like a sprain or strain.
- Reduces pain: Ankle tightness causes pain, mostly in other parts of the body like knees, hips, and even the lower back. Angle mobility can reduce this pain and even help improve overall function.
- Enhances flexibility: Flexible ankles ensure that the joints in your legs, calves, hamstrings, and hips, move freely.
- Better posture: For you to have good alignment and posture, ankle mobility ensures that. You can even reduce postural issues such as a rounded shoulder and swayback.
- Joint health: The exercise keeps the joints in your ankles healthy; it also prevents arthritis and other degenerative conditions.
- Improves circulation: ankle mobility keeps the blood flowing more efficiently to the lower legs and supports the vessels of the circulatory system.
Causes of stiffness in the Ankles
- Injuries: Sprains or fractures are among the common causes of stiffness in the ankles. If you have an injury around the ankle joint, this can cause inflammation or swelling. Also, the injury can affect the free movement of the joints.
- Overuse: Stiff: Overusing the ankle joint when you do repeated movements or too much strain from activities you do, for example, running or jumping can affect the ankles.
- Arthritis: Osteoarthritis can affect the ankle joint and cause arthritis. Chronic breakdown of cartilage in the joint causes pain, swelling, and restricts joint’s movement.
- Tendonitis: Ankle tendonitis occurs when the tendons of the ankle are inflamed. Because of the repeated movements, the joints stiffs; and this can cause inflammation in the ankle joints.
- Gout: This is similar to arthritis; however, Gout is arthritis that affects the ankle joint. It causes stiffness in the ankles. The buildup of uric acid crystals in the joints is the cause for the stiffness.
- Achilles tendon injury: If you have problems in the Achilles tendon (tendonitis or tear), it can make the ankles not to be flexible. You need the Achilles tendon for easy movement, so any damage can result in stiffness.
- Poor footwear: If you wear the wrong shoes, especially, when it is too tight, it can also lead to ankle stiffness. If this continues, it can misalign the ankle joint, cause pain and affect the joints in the ankles.
- Lack of exercise: Sedentary lifestyles such as lack of exercise can cause stiffness in the ankle joint. Exercise helps to strengthen the joints. So, you must exercise for the joints to function well.
- Obesity: When you are overweight, the ankle joint becomes too heavy, so, it affects the joints because of the too much weight. Healthy foods and exercise can prevent or reduce ankle stiffness caused by obesity.
Signs of Poor Ankle Mobility
- Difficulty squatting: An inability to squat down without your heels leaving the ground may be due to poor ankle mobility. It can also be hard on your knees and lower back.
- Limited range of motion: Do you feel you hit a wall when you try to point your toes up toward your shin or flex your foot down toward the ground? Your ankle’s limited range of motion will limit your ability to move efficiently.
- Pain or stiffness in the ankle: Poor ankle mobility can cause pain and stiffness in your ankle, especially after prolonged periods of standing or sitting. It can cause this discomfort to interrupt your daily life and quality of life.
- Feeling wobbly: If you are feeling like your ankle is not holding up or it’s wobbly when you try to walk or stand on uneven surfaces, then there may be an ankle mobility issue.
- Difficulty with balance: Maintenance of balance depends upon ankle mobility. Poor ankle mobility is expressed as an inability to balance on one leg, or in the case of being unsteady on your feet.
Ankle Mobility Exercises
While no miracle treatment will instantly correct your ankle joint problem, there are a few exercises to try. They include the following:
1. Ankle circles
The angle circles are one of the best exercises for ankle mobility. Sit with your legs out in front of you on the floor. Start by doing it slowly in a circular motion to the side, or move it slowly all the way around. Do 10 reps to 15 reps on each side.
2. Calf stretches
Stand with your feet forward and your feet back on a wall. Try to lean forward, keep your back leg straight and your heels on the ground. After this, change sides and hold for 30 seconds.
3. Heel raises
Place your feet hip-width away from one another. Then lower back down and slowly lift your heels off the ground. Perform 15-20 reps.
4. Toe taps: Sit in a chair with your feet on the floor. Raise your toes and lower your toes again. Repeat for 1 minute.
5. Resistance band ankle dorsiflexion
Sit on the floor with a resistance band wrapped around a ball of your foot. Place your hand on top of your ankle, stretch gently, and pull the band towards gently. Now, stretch into dorsiflexion, stand in, shuffle over, hold, and change sides for 30 seconds.
Read also: Back Exercises Using Cable
Ankle mobility improvement tips
- A regular stretch of the calf muscles. Stretch out your tight calves daily because it will relief stffness in the joints. Calf stretches like wall stretches or standing calf raises will try to help improve your ankle range of motion.
- Make sure you work on some ankle mobility exercises. Exercises such as ankle circles, ankle dorsiflexion, and ankle plantarflexion are simple and work to improve the flexibility and strength of the ankles.
- Roll a foam roller or massage ball over your calves and ankles. It will also improve mobility in your ankles through self-myofascial release techniques. Do your calves and ankles roll out if you have them before and after workouts to enhance blood flow to the area and also increase mobility.
- Improve the flexibility of your ankles. Mobility relies on strong ankles, so balance exercises like single-leg stand or stability ball exercises are good to add to your routine. These exercises will help the muscles at your ankles become strong.
- Get yourself a good pair of shoes. Having shoes that suit your feet and support it enough to be able to move your ankle freely can help to improve ankle mobility. Have good arch support and a comfortable fit in your shoes so you don’t get any ankle problems.
- Don’t overtrain or overdo high-impact activities. Putting too much on your ankles can lead to injury and overuse, and you don’t want to do too much. Remember to correct any imbalances noted by listening to your body and giving yourself a lot of rest and recovery time between workouts so you can boost ankle mobility.
- Consult a physical therapist or specialist. If you are having trouble improving your ankle mobility or have chronic pain, you need to see a specialist.
- Your physical therapist will examine how mobile your ankle is and recommend some exercises. The ankle joint is a very important part of balance, so it’s important to keep it flexible and strong.
It’s worth adding a daily routine of ankle circles, calf stretches, and heel raises to try and improve your mobility. It’s simple and only takes a minute or two. Do not wait until you have pain or a limited range of motion on your ankles before you start to implement these exercises.
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