Ankle mobility drills have become popular in the training world over the past few years. As an athletic therapist, I worked extensively with football, rugby, field hockey and various other field sports and can safely say that decreased ankle mobility can contribute to both functional and athletic limitations and is an important component of any rehabilitation or injury prevention program.

Yup, I just said injury prevention and that might make you feel anxious. How about I call it decreasing the risk of injury? Because that is essentially the point.

The idea of injury prevention, especially for traumatic lower limb injuries such as ankle sprains, is often a subject of debate. However, while traumatic injuries and accidents are part of the risk of sports participation, non-contact mechanisms, overuse and microtrauma are also likely to result in injury. For example, a frequent mechanism of ankle injury in football involves the foot planting on the playing surface with the body rotating in the opposite direction, such as when decelerating and/or changing direction.

Injury prevention is a term that refers to implementing structure and strategies that reduce injury risk, occurrence and severity. Fundamentally, range of motion, motor control and strength play a role in injury prevention because they provide athletes with the capacity to absorb, distribute and transfer forces along the kinetic chain.

Let’s dive into why rotational mobility of the ankle plays a role in the prevention of ankle sprains and how to specifically improve it.

HIGH ANKLE SPRAINS – HOW DO THEY HAPPEN?

High ankle sprains, or syndesmotic ankle sprains, are less frequent than lateral ankle sprains, but according to Prentice, are more common than has been realized in the past . This type of ankle sprain occurs with excessive external rotation or forced dorsiflexion of the ankle and may be injured in conjunction with the medial ankle ligaments.

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