Improve Ankle Strength and Mobility with These Exercises

An ankle injury can stop you in your tracks, making running painful or even impossible. Injuries at and below the knee make up approximately 70 percent of all running-related injuries in athletes of all genders, and the ankle is the second most likely spot (after the knee) to get hurt. But most of the common ankle injuries, like Achilles tendinopathy—which is caused by repetitive stress to the tendon that connects the heel to the calf—can be prevented.

By spending just a few minutes a week building mobility and strength, you can stop most overuse injuries from interfering with your running goals.

“I always ask my clients if they’re warming up before a run because that’s the most modifiable thing we can do to prevent injury,” says David London, a physical therapist based in Toronto, Canada.

Your ankles are made to flex and extend as you run and absorb the shock of repeated foot strikes on the pavement. But if the ankle joint’s range of motion is limited or the surrounding muscles aren’t strong enough to withstand the impact, they can’t do their job properly.

“A lot of runners wait too late to start doing this preventative work,” says London. Even if you have never had ankle pain or injuries, focusing on maintaining the health of your joints can keep you moving well through your weekly 5K or to the finish line of your next marathon.

The Anatomy of Your Ankle

Your ankle is a hinge joint, which means it can move forward and back in one plane of motion—unlike the ball-and-socket joints of the hip and shoulder, which can do that and move side to side or rotationally.

Surrounding the ankle joint are muscles, including the calf, tibialis (anterior and posterior), and peroneals, which flex and extend to move your foot. The soft tissue of the ankle’s ligaments connects the ankle bones (like the tibia, fibula, and talus) to one another and stabilizes the joint. Tendons, such as the Achilles, connect the ankle muscles to the bones. Finally, cartilage, which covers the ends of your bones, acts as a shock absorber.

When your foot strikes the ground, the ankle flexes (dorsiflexion, when your toes are pointed upwards) and absorbs the impact, explains London. The ankle extends (plantarflexion, when your toes are pointed downwards) when you push off from the ground to push forward.

Common Ankle-Related Injuries

Your body is a kinetic chain, which means all the muscles, tendons, and bones are connected and work together. Weak or limited ankles don’t just impact a single joint; they can cause issues across your body. Because your ankles help you maintain balance, weakness or tightness can lead to instability when standing or moving. Added wobbliness will make you more prone to acute injuries from tripping or falling or cause knee pain and muscular imbalances from placing more weight on one limb.

Sprains

Sprains are among the most common acute ankle injuries in runners. Low ankle sprains usually occur when a runner rolls or twists their ankle inward or outward while moving. Sprains can be relatively minor (a pull or strain in a ligament) or more significant (a partial or full tear of the ligament).

High Ankle Sprains

High ankle sprains are less common and occur when the ankle is dorsiflexed (toes pointed up) and turns inward or outward at the same time, often caused by a quick change in direction while running or jumping. Though this is more likely in sports like football and soccer, it can also happen to runners, especially in activities with uneven terrain or where quick pivots are necessary, like obstacle course racing.

Stress Fractures and Shin Splints

Overuse can also lead to ankle injuries like stress fractures, which are small cracks in the bone, and Achilles tendinopathy. London says shin splints, characterized by pain along the inside of the shin bone that tends to feel worse with dorsiflexion, are one of the biggest complaints from the runners he treats. Caused by repetitive activity like running, shin splints are an inflammation of the muscles and tendons around the tibia.

Signs of Limited Mobility and Poor Ankle Strength

While noticeable stiffness and discomfort can signal mobility issues, there are other less obvious ways to spot concerns.

Tight Calves

Feeling tenseness or strain in your calves indicates a limited range of motion in your ankles. To check the flexibility of your calves, try standing on the edge of a stair and seeing how low you can drop one heel. “If you can only slightly drop below the edge, you’re really tight through that foot,” London says.

Losing Balance Easily

When assessing a client’s ankle mobility and strength, London first asks them to stand on one foot. If they can do that without losing balance, he hands them a weight and asks them to move it from hand to hand so their center of mass shifts as they balance, forcing them to work harder to stabilize the foot of the standing leg. London isn’t just looking for whether the ankle moves inward or outward but whether the client has enough control to bring it back to center.

If the knee of the standing leg caves inward along with the ankle, that’s also a sign that there may be some ankle weakness and that the knee may be in danger of sustaining an injury when you run.

Stiff Ankles

For another at-home mobility test, you can also try squatting with your toes pointed forward; if you have to spin your feet out to the sides, that’s a sign of ankle stiffness.

7 Moves to Build Ankle Strength and Improve Mobility

You can prevent and rehab from a lot of ankle injuries by improving your ankles’ range of motion and ability to absorb impact.

“Most running injuries are caused by overuse,” says London. By building the strength of your muscles, you also improve the strength of your tendons and ligaments, allowing them to take more impact before sustaining injury. That makes it more likely you can run longer and, more often, pain-free. “Strength training allows you to do more,” London adds. “It’s really about having a foot that’s mobile but also strong.”

Mobility work primes your muscles for movement, increasing blood flow to the area and warming up the muscles. Performed before a run, they help increase your range of motion and can help prevent injury. Many ankle mobility exercises can be modified to strength exercises by slowing them down, doing additional reps, or adding weight.

Five to ten minutes of mobility work (including ankles, hips, and shoulders) before your run is a great starting point to ensure “you’re not over-fatiguing, you’re just priming the system,” says London. You can do the strength exercises twice a week as part of any other strength routine.

Perform the two dedicated mobility moves first, then do one set of each of the moves labeled “Mobility or Strength” as mobility exercises before adding weight or time. Try to do sets of around 12-15 reps, which will fatigue the muscles and help build endurance.

Watch this video to see a compilation of all the ankle strength and mobility moves explained in this article. (Video by Brad Kaminski)

1. Banded Ankle Mobilization

Move Type: Mobility

How to Do It:

• Place a step or a low box about two feet away from an anchor point (the leg of a couch, a stair railing, or a squat rack).
• Loop a long resistance band around the anchor point.
• Place your right foot on the step and your left knee on the ground so your legs are both forming 90-degree angles, as in a deep lunge.
• Grab the end of the resistance band and loop it over the top of your right foot, right below the hinge point of your ankle joint. Deeply bend your right knee forward, bringing your knee over your toes.
• Pause for three to five seconds at the endpoint, then return to the start.
• Do 30 seconds of deep bends on one side before switching sides.

2. Pogo Hops

Move Type: Mobility

How to Do It:

• Begin standing with your feet hip-width apart.
• Push off the balls of your feet and begin doing quick, short jumps, keeping your knees straight but not fully locked throughout the movement. Continue for 30 seconds.

You can jump forward, backward, and side to side as you get comfortable. You can also do this on one leg, jumping on one side for 30 seconds and immediately switching to the other.

3. Heel Walks

Move Type: Mobility or Strength

Heel walks warm up the tibialis anterior, which runs along the front of the shin and is primarily responsible for ankle dorsiflexion.

How to Do It:

• Walk for 30 seconds with only the heels of your feet touching the ground, taking short steps. Draw your toes up as high as possible as you walk.

4. Toe Walks

Move Type: Mobility or Strength

Toe walks help warm up your muscles in the calf and those through your feet and prime your ankles for plantar flexion.

How to Do It:

• After 30 seconds on your heels (from your heel walk), switch to walking on your toes for 30 seconds.

Make it a Strength Move: Hold a dumbbell in each hand as you walk

5. Single-Leg Calf Raises

Move Type: Mobility or Strength

How to Do It:

• Stand on a step allowing only the balls of your feet to be planted on the step (your heels will be hovering behind the step).
• Lift your right foot slightly.
• Holding onto a wall or railing for balance, slowly lower the heel of the left foot until you feel a stretch in your left calf. Press through the ball of your left foot to bring the heel back up and rise up onto the toes of your left foot.
• Slowly lower and repeat.
• Do 30 seconds of raises on one leg before switching legs.

Make it a Strength Move: To improve calf strength and help protect the Achilles tendon, slow down the heel drop, lowering for five seconds before coming back to neutral and onto the toes.

6. Tibialis Raises

Move Type: Strength

How to Do It:

• Stand with your back against a wall, feet flat on the floor, and hip-width distance apart. The first time you try this, bring your feet just about a foot away from the wall.
• Keeping your legs straight, slowly pull your toes off the floor, continuing to pull and engage the shin muscles until only your heels are in contact with the floor.
• Pause, then slowly lower down.
• Do one or two sets of 12-15 reps on days when you are not running, with 30 seconds of rest in between sets.

To increase the difficulty: You can make this move more challenging by bringing your feet further from the wall.

7. Single-Leg Deadlift

Move Type: Strength

How to Do It:

• Stand with feet hip-width apart; keep a soft bend in both knees.
• Shift your weight to your left leg and lift your right foot off the ground.
• Tighten your core, hinge at the hips, and kick your right leg behind you.
• With your hands crossed over your chest, lower your torso down towards the floor until both your torso and right leg are in a straight line and parallel to the floor.
• Do two sets of 12-15 reps on each side with 30 seconds rest between sets.

To increase the difficulty: Grab some free weights and hold one in each hand. Another option: hold one free weight in the hand opposite your lifted leg—if you put a weight in your right hand, your left leg would be raised—then switch sides.

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