| How To Prevent And Cope With Ankle Injuries In Gymnastics |
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Ankle injuries commonly occur in Gymnastics. The reason is that every gymnastics routine ends with landing on your legs. One wrong step or twisting movement and you could easily injure your ankle. Not only that you may be out of gymnastics practice for weeks together till you fully recuperate from it.
More ankle injuries happen to novice gymnasts because they have not first strengthened the ankle muscles. In their enthusiasm to move on with gymnastics routines, they ignore the instructions to perform pre-gymnastics exercise training. Therefore if you want to avoid such injuries you need to first strengthen the muscles supporting your ankles. Outlined here are some exercises for avoiding an injury to your ankle. Further, some post injury and post treatment ankle exercises to cope with them are also provided for your benefit. An exercise that can help you with strengthening your ankle muscles and joint is to perform toe raises. The exercise is better done by standing on a step or beam and allowing one or both heels to hang off the step or beam. This makes your heel/heels drop below horizontal and automatically stretches and strengthens the calf muscles.. If you have already mastered the toe raise exercise after weeks of regular and continuous daily practice, you can add an element of instability to the exercise. This can also serve to make you confident during actual gymnastics routines because at such times you may experience instability. To include the element of instability, you can try the toe raise exercise on a balancing disc or on a skill cushion (8 inch soft landing mat). Standing on one leg with your eyes closed can also serve as an excellent ankle strengthening exercise. When you feel easy, you can again stand on the 8 incher. When you raise your toe/toes there, you will feel your ankle(s) contracting. This prevents you from falling. Even other single leg exercises such as rebounds, stands or squats enable you to strengthen your ankle joint muscles. These and calf stretching exercises can largely decrease the probability of ankle injuries during actual gymnastic routines practice or training. What if you have already had an ankle injury before you have had the opportunity to use the above mentioned exercises? The first thing is to visit a qualified doctor and take the treatment he recommends. After the doctor later allows you back into the gymnastics facility for strength training, you can benefit very much from the following exercises. Ankle movement exercise - Move your ankle about its pivot slowly, as if you are tracing out an alphabet in air with it. Trace from the letter A to Z. Do the whole routine one to three times. Repeat once or twice daily. Ankle exercise using balancing disc - Stand on the floor without support from the wall. Practice balancing on one foot. Do that for five minutes by keeping your foot flat. Take a break and then again repeat the routine once or twice daily. Related Articles
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