Ankle sprains are the most common injury among soccer players, accounting for 20 percent of all injuries.

Ankle sprains affect soccer players of all levels, from beginners to professionals like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

No matter what your skill level, when it comes to preventing sprains during games, there are lots of things you can do to keep your ankles strong and healthy so that you can spend as much time on the field as possible.

Read on to learn more about how soccer players of all ages and abilities can avoid ankle sprains.

Identify the Common Causes of Ankle Sprains

In order to prevent ankle sprains, it’s important to first know how they most often occur in soccer players.

Listed below are some of the most common reasons that soccer players end up with ankle sprains:

• Contact injuries — one player slides into another and the impact causes the player’s ankle to roll

• Tripping over equipment that wasn’t put away properly

• Stepping into holes or tripping over bumps on uneven, poorly maintained fields

• Wearing loose-fitting cleats that leave room for the ankle to twist inside

Preventing Ankle Sprains

Some of these causes of ankle sprains are unavoidable. But, soccer players (and coaches of younger players) can still be proactive about strengthening the muscles that surround the ankle joint. By doing this, players will be more resilient to contact injuries, falls, and other common causes of ankle sprains.

Listed below are four different ways that soccer players can strengthen their lower body and reduce their risk of dealing with sprains. Read the rest of this entry →