How to treat ankle sprains?

Ankle sprains are one of the most common injuries in sports. Especially often ankle sprains occur in dynamic sports, where there are changes in directions of movement, jumps, stumbles, etc. Ankle sprains often occur in team sports such as football, volleyball and basketball. However, the ankle can also be sprained in all other sports and even at everyday things, such as landing on an uneven surface or slightly losing balance.

What is ankle sprain?

Ankle sprain denotes an injury when one or more ankle ligaments are stretched, or are partially or completely torn. In addition, sprain of the ankle ligaments can occur on both sides of the ankle, involving the medial or lateral ankle ligaments. Most often (up to 85% of cases) inversion movements of the foot of the lateral ankle ligament are injured. Ankle ligaments protect and stabilize the ankle joint. If the ankle ligaments are stretched or, in the worst case, even torn, the ankle loses its stability.

Based on the work experience of a physiotherapist in basketball, volleyball and football – it can even be said that ankle sprain is in the TOP 3 of the most common sports injuries. In addition, poor rehabilitation after the initial injury significantly increases the likelihood of repeated injury. Therefore, very often it happens to treat ankle sprains repeatedly.

*Ankle sprain mechanism

How to understand how serious an ankle sprain is?

Being aware of the seriousness of the injury, you will be able to more easily understand how long it will take to heal and when you will be able to return to sports activities. Ankle sprains can be divided into 3 categories:

• grade sprain causes slight pain and swelling, however, the ankle has not lost stability. At first-degree sprains, recovery can be from 1-14 days.
• grade sprain causes moderate pain and swelling, however, you can feel that the ankle has less stability and can hurt at various dynamic movements. As a rule, pain occurs when walking, jumping or running. At sprains of the second degree, recovery can take up to 1 month.
• grade sprain causes great pain, swelling, a hematoma may appear and the injured area may be sensitive to touch. The ankle has significantly decreased stability, there are pains when walking, jumping and running. There may even be pain when loading the injured leg. In such cases, rehabilitation may take up to 3 months.

How to treat ankle sprains?

At 1. The degree of sprains in the ankle can resolve itself by itself, brought to pass pain and swelling. For acute injuries, you can always stick to the R.I.C.E principle (Rest, ice, compression, elevation). However, in case of more serious injuries, rehabilitation and physiotherapy are mandatory. In worse cases, surgery may even be required. In any case, physiotherapy and the gradual strengthening of the ankle ligaments until they are strong enough to be able to return to sports are also necessary after surgery.

When you return to sports activities, in addition to physiotherapy and rehabilitation, the ankle can be stretched with sports teips to give it additional support and stability. Ankle orthoses are also a great option!

Ankle orthoses were originally created to immobilize and protect the ankle after an injury. However, they can be used not only in rehabilitation cases, but also in the prevention of injuries – or to reduce and avoid the risk of injury.

Great Active Ankle ankle orthoses!

The American brand Active Ankle specializes in ankle orthoses used by amateur and professional athletes of different ages. It has been scientifically proven that ankle orthoses help reduce the risk of injury. However, in sport, not only good ankle stability is important, but also freedom of movement, or functional ankle mobility. Each sport has its own needs, so the ankle orthosis must be carefully selected and the golden mean between stability (protection) and mobility (function) must be found. That is why the Active Ankle brand offers different types of orthoses, for the needs of each athlete: rigid ankle orthoses, sniffable ankle orthoses, as well as ankle bandages.

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