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Butcher's Dog! Regular
outdoor fitness tips from the canine on creatine. Cold wet
nose and glossy coat guaranteed.
Bob's Your Ankle...
Most of us sprain or, worse, break an
ankle, sooner or later - okay, not dogs, we don't really
have ankles, but you know what I'm saying - and a fair
number of us never really recover properly leaving a
chronically weak ankle that can't be trusted on rough
ground.
With the right rehab though, your ankle
can be almost as good as new - here's how to deal with the
wonkies.
Right After It Happens
Classic RICE - Rest / Ice / Compression /
Elevation - is the first step, though if things feel really
bad, get the ankle x-rayed. It may be broken or one of the
tendons could have ripped a chip of bone off as it comes
away.
• If it's 'just' a sprain, ice it,
using an ice pack or frozen peas wrapped in a towel. Don't
put ice directly on the skin
• Elevate it, by sitting with your ankle on a stool or
chair with padding to keep it higher than your hip.
• Use an elasticated bandage between toes and knee to
help minimise swelling and encourage sympathy
• Keep your weight off your foot.
Next Steps
Don't use the ankle to bear weight until
the initial pain dulls. How long this takes depends on how
bad the injury is, but as soon as you can, start moving your
ankle straight up and down to help maintain mobility and
range of movement, but don't try to rotate the ankle at
first. As things improve, you can start jogging or wlaking
gently on the flat, but if it causes pain, rest before
trying again.
Balance
The best advice you'll get on balance
will be from a sports physio and, if you've sprained your
ankle badly or have long term problems with it, I'd advise
you to see one. You'll get professional advice on balance
exercises and, if needed, how to strap your ankle to protect
it.
Ankles are crucial to balance.
Unfortunately, ligaments strains are not the only problem.
Bad sprains can damage the proprioceptor repsonse, which
effectively means that your brain cannot easily tell what
angle your foot is at relative to the leg. With a healthy
ankle, stepping on unen ground unexpectedly, your reflexes
will rapidly compensate and stop the ankle
turning.
With a damage ankle, that doesn't always
happen, which is why ankle problems can become chronic as
the same ankle is sprained over and over again causing more
damage and slack ligaments which don't help
either.
To rebuild the response, you need to do
special balance exercises, preferably using a wobble board -
think up-turned sombrero made of wood - or by standing on
piles of cushions. The details are too complex to go into
here, but it's a long term undertaking and you'll need to
grit your teeth and persevere for six months or so. It's a
pretty dull thing to do, but worth it in the long
term.
Strapping
One other aid to preventing injury is to
strap the ankle using non-stretch zinc oxide tape. - see
this
article for some clinical detail
- at it's most basic, it's a question of running, say, three
lengths of tape in parrallel down the outside of the ankle
and looping them under the foot back to the start point,
then adding a couple of horizontal bands around the lower
calf to support the vertical strips. A physio will be able
to give more detailed advice.
For serious support stuff
like this is the order of the
day, but some thinking is that you're not really trying to
support the ligaments, but rather to substitute for the
damaged proprioceptor response. In simple terms that means,
your ankle starts to turn, the tape pulls on the skin, your
brain registers that pull and knows your ankle is out of
line and is able to correct quickly. In this case, really
extensive strapping isn't crucial since it's just acting as
a guide for your balance repsonse rather than physically
preventing damage.
So, happy ankles!
The Butcher's Dog (four
ankles)
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