• Question: i have a nearly recovered ankle and need a support sock when i do PE how can i make it better, my sock is realy annoying!!!

    Asked by zillage1 to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Rebecca Lacey

      Rebecca Lacey answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Sorry to hear about your ankle but good news that it is nearly healed!

      I’m sure it will recover with time and a bit of rest

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      Oh no, sounds like an annoying situation! It really depends on what you did to hurt it inthe first place but there are some things you can do to help it.

      If you need a support sock, it sounds like you’ve weakened the ankle, so you should be doing some strengthening exercises to help it return to normal (there are some basic ones here: http://www.wikihow.com/Strengthen-Your-Ankles). Strengthening exercises are good for all your joints and if you do them you’re less likely to hurt yourself again!

      A balance test to see if your ankles are equal:
      stand on one leg, close your eyes (no cheating!) and time how long it is before you start to wobble. Don’t do it until you fall over though, just a small wobble! Is there a difference between which leg you stand on?

      I’m a mad runner/fell runner so I’m pretty used to these injuries – in fact I’m currently on a 6 week “no running allowed” because I hurt my knee in a race 🙁

    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      OK I’ve consulted my brother on this one, he’s a physiotherapist, so much better qualified than me to comment!

      A really good way to test how stable your one ankle is compared to the other one is something called a “star excursion balance test”. This video shows how to set one up:

      You try to balance on one leg and touch the toe of your other leg out as far as possible in a particular direction. You should find that you are able to reach out further when you’re balancing on your good leg! You could use the difference between legs to measure how well your recovery is doing.

      How you could speed up recovery really depends on what you’ve done to the ankle. Have you been advised to wear the support sock? Like Carol said, strengthening exercises might help, but you’re probably best following your doctors advice, or even better trying to see a physiotherapist.

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