Best Ankle Strengthening Exercises

When it comes to keeping in good shape and ensuring a healthy physique, strengthening exercises are very important.  If you injure or hurt yourself during a workout you are less likely to continue with your fitness program in the longer term.  Not only this, but bad injuries can continue to haunt you throughout the rest of your life, particularly if they don't heal well. 

By taking precautions and strengthening injury prone areas you can dramatically improve your chances of avoiding injuries and sprains and keeping your body healthy. 

The ankles are some of the most injury prone areas on the human body.  Every year millions of people sprain, strain or fracture the ankle joint area.  As such, below are some strength training exercises specifically designed for the ankle area.

Toe Points:  Simply pointing your toes can help to prevent ankle injury.  This motion of pointing and releasing one's toes is known as Plantar Flexion.  Performing this motion daily can help to keep the foot strong.

Flexing our Feet:  Flexing, as the other side of the pointing motion is also a great and simply way to keep the feet loose and the muscles limber.  This move is known as Dorsi Flexion and is a mainstay of ankle health.

Foot Raises:  Standing straight holding on to a chair or something else for support you should raise yourself on one foot up to your tippy toes.  Hold yourself up on pointed toes for about ten seconds and then return the heel to the ground.  Do several of these on either foot to help strengthen the surrounding ankle muscles and supports.

Alphabet:  Now in order to target all the muscles that surround the ankle some experts suggest simply laying on the floor and with one foot writing all the letters of the alphabet with your foot.  When finished do the same with the opposite foot.  By doing this daily you will strengthen all the ankle joint and foot muscles.

Following the above exercises on a regular basis will help to keep your feet and ankles strong.  This will definitely help with any kind of physical activity you are engaged in as well as helping to prevent both major and minor injuries.

So whether you are training for the iron man or entirely new to exercise, keeping your ankles limber and strong will be a great boon to your program.  Failing to follow this advice can lead to minor strains, sprains and breaks or worse.