Importance of Ankle in movement performance

At the moment, one of these trends is to focus on ‘mobility’. For the purposes of this article, let’s think of mobility as simply ‘the ability to produce a desired movement’. Obviously, some degree of mobility is important to all of us, for everything we do. The real question is, how much is enough?

Let’s take a look at a very common and important example of that concept: the ankle. Commonly injured and heavily depended joint. the ankle often tends to be on the stiff side .

Stiffness in this joint can have a massive effect on the kinetic chain from the knees, hips, and low back – and often plays a role in injury to those areas. A restriction at the ankle can lead to tissue overload – which then creates injury.

In many sports, superior balance ability is necessary to achieve the highest competitive level and avoid lower limb injuries . To control balance, the central nervous system (CNS) integrates visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive information to produce motor commands that coordinate the activation patterns of muscles.

The ankle is a key component in rehabilitating knee problems because it is often one of the causative factors of knee stability problems in the first place. Valgus collapse and ankle pronation can be results of limited ankle dorsiflexion mobility.

Is moving the ankle into its extreme end-range cause any pain ?

If we don’t have pain, but we do have a limitation, we have an ankle dysfunction, probably with mobility. That dysfunction can either be on one or both sides.

People with ankle dysfunction have to compensate because there is no other way to accomplish a movement strategy. We want to remove the ankle dysfunction for compensation during our rehabilitation exercise.

How to check ankle mobility?   Click  here

Referances : 

1. The Role of Ankle Proprioception for Balance Control in relation to Sports Performance and Injury
   Jia Han,1,2 Judith Anson,2 Gordon Waddington,2 Roger Adams,2 and Yu Liu1
2. Bullock-Saxton JE, Janda V, Bullock MI. The influence of ankle sprain injury on muscle activation during hip extension. Int J Sports Med. 1994; 15:330–334
3. de Noronha M, França LC, Haupenthal A, Nunes GS. Intrinsic predictive factors for ankle sprain in active university students: A prospective study. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2012 Jan 20