It truly is a blessing to live in a place like New England with all that it offers throughout the year.
And while time outdoors is an absolutely wonderful thing, we may find ourselves occasionally a bit challenged navigating the uneven and unpredictable ground that is New England as it moves through the four seasons.
It seems we tend to get a bit spoiled by how reliable the surfaces of first world tend to be, and as a result plenty of us can get a little disconnected from our feet.
Well, we all know how that works…. if you leave one place, that always means you have moved to another. When one is not existing through their feet on the ground, they often are stuck in their head.
And when you are stuck in your head, then you tend to get ahead of yourself.
Literally.
And just like that single moment of distraction while driving can lead to a busted mail box, fender bender or far worse…just a single moment of disconnected stepping can easily turn and ankle over and under us.
Sometimes it happens with a BAM, and other times it is just the power gets painfully cut. It is an un-mistakable feeling when that ankle goes over hard, and it is often followed with some level of clearing the calendar for whatever time frame may be needed.
If you have ever had the misery of a sprained ankle sprain then you know not only how debilitating it can be, but also how much the challenges it brings can linger on.
And while it doesn’t take nearly as long as Google would tell you to recover from, when a single sprain turns into a second and a third..followed by an ankle you just do not trust…period… life can become pretty limited.
This is something the medical community calls chronic ankle instability. Most folks prefer to call them “bad ankles”.
Well the good news is that just like is no such thing as a “bad kid”, there is truly no such thing as a “bad ankle”. By and large just as that kid is just doing their best with the environment they are being raised in, that ankle is just trying its best to hold you up despite the situation it is being handed.
And just like the kid that “completely changes” once given the love, attention, and guidance that they needed… if you address the underlying reasons for the troublesome behavior of those “bad ankles” they tend evolve into fairly reliable ones.
Now I know if you have read this far you are probably wondering what those underlying reasons are that cause folks to chronically sprain their ankles…
Well, it comes down to at least two major things.
The first being that the person who chronically sprains their ankles loves being on the outside of their feet. I am completely serious… despite all their problems they absolutely love bearing weight and otherwise living in general on the far outer corners of their feet.
The second factor is that they do not shift, pivot, or move very much up above that ankle. They are a bit rigid up top, and the ankles have to make up for it. If you image your unreliable ankle as a top heavy mast ship rocking way too hard in on the storm then you get the picture. We do much better being able to bend and bow like that tree blowing in the wind…
So what to do about it?
Well if you identify the problem, quite often times you identify the solution…and thankfully, no, it is not amputation.
The first order of business to get out of the cycle of rolling those ankles is to get those feet fully on the ground. From there, you have a chance to start learning to pivot your body around and up above them.
If you want to know a more both about this and how you can go about address these things, then watch the videos below…
This first video goes into much greater depth of the underlying reasons why some folks get stuck in the loop of chronically spraining their ankles. This gives you the big picture of what is going on.
This second video third give some very basic way to begin addressing the problems above and below those ankles…
And, this third video maps out a very basic and reliable milestone to master if you want to make those ‘bad ankles” a thing of the past.
There are two additional videos that go even further in depth with what may be needed to iron out in some folks’ situations. These can be found HERE and HERE.
If you have any questions about the above, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Regardless, I hope you find the above helpful, and I hope you are comfortable, able and well.