Of all the injuries that can affect runners, ankle injuries are one of the most common. Even professional runners like Olympians Usain Bolt and Paula Radcliffe have dealt with ankle injuries that negatively affected their careers.

Whether you’re an Olympic hopeful or just someone who runs for fun, it’s crucial that you take steps to keep ankle injuries at bay. Not only can an injured ankle prevent you from running consistently, but it can also negatively affect your movement patterns and make other forms of exercise more difficult.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about preventing ankle injuries while running.

Common Ankle Injuries for Runners

The following ankle injuries are probably the most common ones that can affect runners:

Ankle Sprains

An ankle sprain occurs when the ligaments of the ankle are damaged or torn.

In runners, ankle sprains are often the result of a misstep when coming down from a curb, or from tripping over rocks or cracks in the road or sidewalk.

Often, sprains do not cause lasting damage, particularly if they’re mild and diagnosed early. They’re typically characterized by swelling and constant pain, even when you’re at rest.

Overuse Injuries

As their name suggests, overuse injuries are the result of overuse.

In runners, some common overuse injuries include posterior tibial tendonitis, which affects the back of the ankle, and peroneal tendonitis, which affects the inside of the ankle.

With overuse injuries, you’ll likely feel pain during activity, but not when you’re at rest.

Stress Fractures

Stress fractures are small cracks or severe bruising that affects the bone. Stress fractures can be brought on by an acute injury, like a fall, or by overuse. Runners are particularly prone to stress fractures in the ankles and the feet.

How to Prevent Ankle Injuries

In order to avoid these common ankle injuries, it’s important to take the precautionary measures. They’ll help you strengthen your ankles so that you’re more resilient. They can also correct improper movement patterns that increase your injury risk. Read the rest of this entry →

Professional football is one of the highest-satisfaction professions, as nine out of ten former athletes say they are glad they played the game. But fewer than half these men would want their children to participate in the sport, due to the frequency and severity of the injury. 90 percent of former players suffered at least one major injury during their careers, typically to their ankle, knee, hip, or foot.

To get back on the field faster, many injured football players wear orthotic braces over their injured joint. These devices are not the cumbersome braces they were just a few years ago. Instead, most braces are very lightweight yet also very strong. For example, ankle braces for running can fit snugly without inhibiting a runner’s motion, providing support and stabilization to the vulnerable joint, and helping to absorb the shock of the foot’s impact with the ground.

Don’t miss these notable ankle injuries:

Jerry Kramer, 1961 Green Bay Packers

Both before and after Kramer strained several ligaments in his left ankle during the championship game against the Minnesota Vikings, he was known as one of the toughest football players of his or any era.

As a youth in the 1950s, Kramer lost a fist-size chunk of his right side during a high school workshop incident and he was accidentally shot in the arm with a double-barrel shotgun. In college, doctors left a large, zipper-style scar on his neck after they removed a chipped vertebra.

After joining the Packers in 1958,  Kramer detached his retina during a game against the Los Angeles Rams in 1960. Four years later, he missed an entire season after surgery to remove four large wooden splinters that were lodged in his groin near his spine from a 1953 calf-chasing incident. Read the rest of this entry →