Top 5 Exercises To Get Rid Of Annoying Chronic Ankle Pain

Hey guys, in today’s video, I’m going to be showing you five exercises that you need to do to get rid of your chronic ankle pain. My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. This channel is focused on helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to our channel so you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we post every single week.

Let’s get to it, guys, the first exercise to get rid of chronic ankle pain, you’ve got to master toe curls. This exercise is just foundational getting the right muscles working so that your ankle joints can move well and be positioned properly. So, I’ve got a model here, ready to help us out, and she’s going to show some top person is going to get your heels up like that.

Yep, there you go. And I’m going to do is curl just like that it is like what it sounds, you’re trying to bend every single knuckle in your foot joints, your toe joints, and hold it there for 10 seconds. And you do this 10 times, relax for as long as you need to between the reps, and then curl and try to get every toe involved.

Sometimes there’ll be a lazy toe, like a little pinky toe, or maybe the second toe. And some people it’s different from individual but focus on that one that doesn’t want to bend as good. And just make it go make it bend. There you go. After you’ve done 10 reps of this exercise, then we need to practice foot squeezes just a bit.

So, for this exercise, you’re going to put your feet flat on the floor. And it’s a variation of the toe curls. Because you’re using the same muscles except, you’re not going to actually be curling your toes you’re more so flattening them out. So go ahead and push your toes flat there. And what you should feel at your toe tips is that the blanch and turn white just a bit perfect. You can see her second toe especially she’s just turning a bit white in the skin.

You’re not trying to go 100% You’re just trying to flatten your toes out. And what should happen is your arch should come up just a bit right here. Go ahead and relax and then do it again. Yep, there you go. He saw her parts just suddenly come up, relax and do it again. Yeah, it fell down right there, and he came up. So, you can see them this side, you can do both sides simultaneously. There you go.

Good muscle contraction their side. And you try to do this without lifting the ball your foot like right here at the base of the big toe. It wants to come up on both sides. But just do your best try. Keep that down whenever you’re flexing your toes. And when you should also feel as your ankle position move and see how it moves down right there. Go to move it up. There you go.

You just get better alignment of the bones in your ankles when you flex your toes like that. Awesome. This exercise is critical to touch on. It’s not a real big exercise. It’s not going to tire you out. But because we’re going to go to heel raises. Next, it’s important to get your toes working in this position because you’re going to use the same muscles on the heel raise.

Okay, so for this next exercise, you’re going to use a tennis ball just like so, you’re going to be holding this between your heels. So, let’s move over to the wall. Facing this way, yep, easy facing the wall. And once you’re there, you’re going to position that fall between your heels. Perfect, just like that.

Once the heels are grabbing the ball, you’re going to just squeeze a little bit. Now you’re not to kill the ball, you’re just going to squeeze a bit, grab with your toes, just like we practiced. Perfect, just like that. Make sure that arches kind of want to come up a bit. Then holding your toes just suddenly grabbed, you’re going to pick up your heels, go ahead and lift your heels and hold the ball, come all the way up as high as you can hold it there for 10 seconds. Awesome job.

After 10 seconds in come on down and relax the toes. If you need to set up again do so we’re going to do 10 reps like this. So, grab the ground and then come up. Hold it there for 10 seconds. Good. Now the holds are really important. We’re not going to do reps where you come up and down and up and down.

Just because if you have got chronic ankle pain you need to get rid of it. You need to fire the muscles better and when you hold a contraction like this for 10 seconds, it allows the fibers are the cells within the muscle to all fire better sometimes there’s some of those fibers just aren’t working very well. And if you can get a hold going it gives the nerves a chance to wake up every single muscle fiber in those toe flexors.

So that allows you to get a more efficient contraction within those toe flexors and then it helps you elevate the heels better, which then positions the ankle joint better and just improves the mechanic of the ankle joint allows you to get rid of that ankle pain. So as soon as a couple reps here, great job, flex the toes, arches up, and then heel up and go all the way up and hold it.

And she’s holding on to the wall for balance by the way, you want to be grabbing onto a piece of furniture, the wall, see how she’s holding on them counter works really good to something sturdy, that you won’t lose your balance on. I’m going to do one more, and then we’ll wrap this one up. Good. Awesome job. That’s exercise number three, fantastic.

When she’s done there, we’re going to go to the next one. Right, for the next exercise, you’re going to need to keep holding on to something for balance. So, we’ve got a little stepstool here, a tall stepstool. It’s got a handle on it. And we’re going to be doing single leg balancing for 10 seconds at a time, also using those toe flexors.

So, let’s start with the left foot here, and go ahead and grab with a toe, and they’re going to be toe touching with the right foot. So just keep your right foot touching the ground barely with your toes, you’re putting about 90% or more to the right foot, I’m sorry, to the left foot and the one closest to the to the stepstool in this case, and you’re not lifting your heel on the left foot, you’re trying to balance there for 10 seconds.

So go ahead and minimally hold on with your hand, try to just hold on with your fingertips, you know, and then minimally hold on with your left toes just for balance. In fact, if you can pick up your toes even better, and just balance on that left foot. There you go. 10 seconds, grabbing with the toes.

When we zoom in just a bit here, you can see the little corrections that are ankles going through, it’s actually very stable in this position. Once you get the toes going, you can see the whites in her toe tips. I mean, she’s using her toe muscles really good. After about 10 seconds, relax. You can alternate sides, you can see on the same side, but let’s do 10 alternating right now. So go ahead and go to the other foot.

She’s just barely holding on a little bit. There you go. She’s cheating a bit. This left foots up all the way though. Toes are working. Okay, that’s about 10 seconds. So go ahead and switch. Try just holding on like one fingertip right there. Yeah, there you go. And maybe just one toe. Or none of you can get them both in the shot. Barely Hold on. There you go. Awesome job, embers got really good balance.

So, this isn’t too much of a struggle for her. But if you’ve had a chronic ankle problem, it’s going to be tough for you. So, you might hold on with your full fist, you might clench, you know the handle or the counter wherever you’re at. And it’s okay to put your foot that you’re picking up, down more of a need to, she’s doing over 90% body weight on the leg she’s balancing on in this case, she’s on a right leg right now.

If you need to put just 70 or 60% on that leg and balanced born through your other foot and your hand up here. That’s okay, you can do that. Good job was to one more on the left side. And then we’ll move into the next exercise. Good. So, she’s just balancing there, get those foot muscles going and see your toe tips are white, you might do this barefoot at home too, just to see that your toes are working right. Some people have a really good feel for what their bodies doing. And you might not need to take off your socks.

And sometimes you could do this in your shoes as well. If you feel like you just feel more stable inside a sturdy shoe. That’s cool. You could do that. Good job. Alright, so let’s move that aside. And the last section we’re going to do here are squats. Now before you freak out, this is just a mini squat.

You can do as little as you want or as much as you want. But the trick here is you’ve got to grab the toes, you’ve got to use that that foot grab technique that we just use, we call it a foot squeeze. So, where your toe tips are just pressing down but your toes are flat, not curling up. So, Amber’s already doing it.

You can see her toes are grabbing her arches are going up just a bit. She’s not killing it. How far apart your feet are is up to you. You can widen them as much as you want or narrow them as much as you want. And are going to do is dip those hips down into a mini squat position. That’s plenty right there, grabbing the toes the whole time. So, it’s never move.

They just stay grabbing. And then come up. Let’s do 30 reps like this. Easy. You don’t have to go super deep. Yep, there you go. And the point is you’re trying to keep those toes grabbing all time. Now if you have crunchy knees, loud knees, painful knees, your hips or your back bothers you when you’re doing this stay high, just barely unlock your knees, and then come right back up, try that just barely unlock your knees, and then right back up. And that’s plenty right there.

That’s going to be some good work for you. But if you can tolerate going down lower, and you’re still keeping your feet working, that’s good. And if you are doing this at home, and you feel like you can go down pretty low, like you normally will squat quite low, go for it.

But double check that you’re using those foot muscles, just like we talked about, a lot of times when people get lower into the squat, their weight distribution changes in their feet, and they’re no longer using their toes, you’ve got to be using your toes the whole time, you might need to reposition your feet, you need to angle them out a bit more that might help.

Sometimes it just feels better to do that there isn’t a perfect position, just get in what feels comfortable for you to use your foot muscles. Good job.

Let’s do like another five here. So, as you start rounding out your 30 reps here, you should feel like your foot muscles are getting tired, fatigued, they shouldn’t be hurting if they’re hurting, you might be doing too much with this exercise right now, this might just be a little much for you to back off, and wait to get to this eventually. Good job. I think what two more was at it.

So, once you’re done with these squats, you finished all the exercises. And here’s what I want you to do. As far as how frequently to do these exercises, you need to be doing them kind of often because you’re the point here is to up your strength. And using your toe flexors like this doing the heel raises, doing the squats, making sure that you can balance on one leg using your foot muscles to all these exercises are critical for your everyday functions for you to be able to walk of course, Stan move around, change positions, change directions and get up and down.

That’s why the squat because you have to sit down sometimes you have to stand up sometimes. So, you need to be able to use your feet properly during that motion. A lot of times when people have chronic ankle pain, they lose strength in their toe flexors. And they’re not using them when they go through these everyday motions. And they start to compensate with other muscles, which then puts bad pressures on the ankle joints and can begin to damage the cartilage begin to damage the tendons, ligaments and change the way the muscles work.

There are even nerves in the area that can get irritated. So, you want to avoid getting weaker and weaker in your toe flexors. You need to be using them. And sometimes people give opposite advice will say don’t use your toe flexors, you should be able to squat, and your toe should wiggle you shouldn’t put any pressure to the front of your foot, give this a shot, put it to the test.

If you feel more stability in your feet, when you squat down. It is a good thing. If you can move around like doing squats with your feet grabbing the whole time, you’re probably going to feel way more stability in your everyday movements. Now, if these exercises are just too much for you, let’s say your ankle just got hurt or you’re dealing with a lot more pain, then you’re going to want to go check out in the video that I’ve linked in the description below.

It’s called three steps to take care of a recently sprained ankle. That’s kind of like what to do if it is swelling. If you can’t put weight on it. If you’re concerned that you might have broken it, go check out that video because this might be too much for you right now. And if you’re looking for more exercises to strengthen stay tuned subscribe to our channel.

We’re going to post more videos every week about how to get stronger how to keep your body healthy so that you can be healthy, active and mobile. Give us a thumbs up if you thought this video was helpful. And please subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any of the future videos we put out. We’ll see in the next video. Bye