Ankle Flexibility and Sprained Ankles
Posted by Brian McCormick on January 3, 2009
As we near the mid-point in the season, injuries mount. Many are ankle injuries, especially sprained ankles, the most common basketball injury. As I googled Arnie Kandor, the Detroit Pistons’ Strength & Conditioning Coach, to find an old article which described his remedy for ankle sprains, I found a different article about the importance of ankle flexibility to the health of a basketball player.
“NBA basketball players lose 20 to 25 percent of their ankle flexibility throughout the year because of all the calf work they do,” says Pistons head strength and conditioning coach Arnie Kander, P.T… “Your calves get tight from moving forward, and then you start bending everywhere else.” That’s when the injuries start — and why you see so many basketball players come down with ankle sprains by midseason, Kander says.
Kander suggests a Dynamic Warm-up before each game and practice. Other ways to improve or maintain ankle flexibility are to use common ankle rehabilitation exercises, like standing one one foot and drawing the alphabet with the other foot.
tomscott99 said
I’m curious about ankles. In my stellar pickup basketball career, I pretty much always had some degree of sprain in my ankles. Since I started running, running trails specifically, I haven’t had any sprains, even when I have periods of time when I play basketball regularly. I’ll often step on the side of a rock or root while running, sometimes I catch myself and sometimes I flip my ankle over pretty hard, but it never bothers me. When I take a novice trail-runner with me, they invariably trip, stumble, and tweak their ankles. I read a note by a cross-country coach who said he could tell who hadn’t put their off-road miles in during the summer because those kids would hurt their ankles when the cross-country team started running together in the fall.
I think trail running has helped my ankles with a combination of increased ankle flexibility and balance/strength from acclimation to running on uneven surfaces with rocks and roots.
There are other possible explanations for the decrease in ankle sprains:
- I play less bball and am more gravity-bound, so the frequency and magnitude of landing hard on someone else’s foot is decreased.
- My ankles healed in my time off of bball and are no longer unstable from past injuries.
- or maybe there’s just no good connective tissue left in my ankles to get sprained.
Don’t want to get into the old discussion of how distance running is not good training for basketball, but I’d bet that some jogging on trails would be good for balance and for lower-leg flexibility and strength. Maybe you could do something similar on balance boards or something, but I really think something could be learned there.
Recall that Kareem always wore low-tops and claimed that it helped prevent knee and leg injuries. Is there any research out there showing that something incorporating instability, rather than being taped into hightops all the time, helps avoid injuries?
Brian McCormick said
I’ve seen studies on both sides of the argument with regards to high tops and knee injuries, but I also know highly regarded basketball strength and conditioning coaches who swear that the more advanced shoes today which restrict ankle flexion contribute to knee pain (tendonitis) and injuries because the force has to go somewhere, and if it is not absorbed at the ankle joint because the ankle will not flex, then it moves to the knee. I also cited a study in the last year that said that the more expensive the running shoe (which usually means more bells and whistles), the more injury prone the runner.
As for trail running, it makes sense. Working out in sand has the same effect. I also wrote in the last year of the benefits of barefoot training on a mat, like in boxing or gymnastics classes. I advocated in a past newsletter using the wrestling room at your h.s. gym to jump rope bare footed before practice.
I hate high tops and almost never twist my ankle and never twist it severely. It will be interesting to see what happens with Kobe this year because many people have made a big deal about his new shoe and I’ve seen doctors and strength coaches suggest that he is setting a bad precedent for younger athletes by wearing low tops (ignoring players like Steve Nash who have worn low tops for years).
Interestingly, soccer players use the same cuts as basketball players and volleyball players jump even more than basketball players, yet both sports employ low top sneakers/cleats (of course soccer is different because it is on grass and athletes wear cleats).
khandor said
Tomscott99,
Everything you said there is correct.
Reducing ankle sprains has to do with the proper training of the proprioceptors … which can happen effectively, in part, through the type of trail running you’re talking about. In addition, all manner of “balance exercises” are sound training methods for this specific problem.
In general:
* Using ankle braces is not the best way to go
* Taping loses its effect rather quickly
* Low or Mid cuts allow the body’s proprioceptors to function better and, therefore, do a better job in the prevention of ankle sprains in the first place.
[i.e. when human beings do things barefoot ... there are almost no ankle sprains to speak of]