Injury Reduction for Football: The Ankle Joint

The recent brash of injuries in professional football has a lot of fans wondering if this is a trend or coincidence.  There are few avenues of thought on this issue as far as why there may seem to be more injuries in this pre-season.

1. More high-profile players are getting injured.  This is something elitefts™ Director of Sales Matt Goodwin alluded to recently.  Injury rates may be similar to previous years, but when your franchise player is banged up, fans hit the panic button.

2. Some injuries are more obscure.  Look at any injury report from professional football and they will be littered with knee and hamstring injuries.  Third place usually goes to some sort of shoulder issue.  Injuries that make headlines like hand, foot, abdominal, and back injures often spark more concern.  Some onlookers make the mistake of assuming that the less common injuries are more preventable.  In actuality, non-contact soft tissue injuries have the best reduction potential.  Football is, however, a contact sport the unpredictability of moment along with high-speed collisions often trump any preventative exercises.

3. Off-Season Training.  The Angry Coach has shed a lot of light for me about this topic in a recent conversation.  Although it is difficult to pinpoint external factors like minimized workloads at practice, timing, the media, artificial surfaces; there is not sure way of any of those (or all of those factors) can have an effect on the public's perception of injuries by their beloved superstars.

The physiological needs for each joint of the body primarily alternate as you venture through the anatomy.  Coach Mike Boyle has used this joint-by-joint approach to illustrate the inverse correlation between a particular joint's need for stability versus mobility.

Ankle Mobility and Foot Stability

Some ways you can reduce the chance of lower non-contact lower extremity injuries on the field.

1. Warm-up and do movement preparation barefoot.  This is not the cure-all but shoes add stability but supporting not strengthening.  Add cleats and this problem can be multiplied.

2. Ankle mobility in the sagittal plane. Increased strength of the anterior-tibialis when dorsi-flexing along with increased range of motion when plantar flexing will help reduce the possibility on injury, increase squat depth, create better change of direction angles, and prevent the foot (joint below), knee, and hip (joints above) from compensating.

3. Increase strength in the frontal and transverse planes.  This can enhance the proprioceptive qualities of the lower leg.  Along with more efficient neuromuscular coordination, this can keep the athlete in a better biomechanical position on the field.

Band Dorsi-Flexion

Band Dorsi-Flexion

Ankle Rotation

Elitefts™ Advisor and Mountain Dog Training & Nutrition owner John Meadows demonstrating ankle rotation.