What To Do After An Ankle Sprain
A bad ankle sprain is best healed with rest and physical therapy. It’s a fact that after an ankle sprain, your ankle is weak. This weakness often leads to the ankle being unable to hold the balance of the weight of the body. Any little misstep can cause the ankle to roll leading to another sprain.
Weak ankles can be fixed easily with physical therapy. After an ankle sprain, there first needs to be a period of healing. This means consistent icing and rest. Ice will help decrease inflammation speeding up the healing process as well as providing pain relief. The next goal is to ensure that the the ankle sprain suffers no further injury.
Rest allows the ankle to heal and there are several strategies that will prevent the ankle from further injury. One of these strategies is to wear crutches the first few days after a sprain in order to protect the ankle especially if you cannot walk without pain. A second and very important strategy is to wear an ankle brace until your ankle heals and the muscles begin to rebuild. An ankle brace restricts ankle movement making it virtually impossible to further damage the ankle.
Rebuilding Your Ankle To Avoid Another Sprain
Once the ankle has sufficient time to heal, it is essential to rebuild the ankle. One of the most common injuries after an ankle sprain is known as the chronic ankle sprain. This is where a person spends weeks in recovery after an ankle sprain only to sprain their ankle again and have to undergo several more weeks in recovery. This can occur over and over again but at Cross Bay Physical Therapy, we make sure you do not become a victim to this type of injury.
The reason why chronic ankle sprains occur is because of weak ankles. Weak ankles cannot support the weight and balance of the body and therefore, roll or twist whenever the ankle is given enough pressure. By building up the muscles surrounding the ankle, we can protect you from another sprain, get you back to normal, and allow you to return to other intense activities such as exercise.
Some of the best way to re-strengthen the ankle is through balancing exercising. Our physical therapists will show you a range of exercises that will allow you to rebuild the strength of your ankle. During your recovery, it is also important to strengthen surrounding muscles such as the calf muscle because while your ankle’s remain weak, it will be muscles like the calves that take on more burden.
Our physical therapists provide hands-on guidance to help your overcome and heal from injury. Call (718) 835-0084 and schedule your initial evaluation.