Most people aren’t thinking about their ankles and how to strengthen them until they’ve got some sort of ankle issue or pain. By then unfortunately it’s already painful and a little late to ad, but don’t fret, nothing that can’t be undone!

First we’ll talk about some things you can do to address any current pain you might be experiencing at the moment. Conventional wisdom used to be to put ice and elevate a sprain, but one thing constantly overlooked in the “R.I.C.E.” method (rest, ice, COMPRESS, elevate) is, you guess it, Compression. DPT Kelly Starrett and author of “The Supple Leopard” goes into using a compression band on the ankle joint in the video below.

 

If you’re not suffering from any ankle pain, or once you are pain free, then working on your ankle mobility & flexibility is up next. In this quick video, Eric Cressey of famed Cressey Sports Performance briefly covers one such exercise called High Tension Ankle Mobility:

Once you’ve worked on reducing pain, and gaining mobility, its time to train some stability. An easy modification to any training your doing now, is to add single leg variations of any lower body exercises you may be doing, “Skater squats”, single leg RDLs, and single leg squats. Another thing you can add to any rest day, is training the actual foot muscles, by doing Toe Curls! Yes, although it may sound silly, strengthening the muscles of the foot are an excellent way to train for foot & ankle stability! 

One thing I still hear out there, is that weight training for kids before puberty is going to be detrimental. Either they’re going to have stunted growth, or going to cause some sort of lasting ailment, nothing could be furthere from the truth. There is plenty of science out there to dispell this “old wives tale” that youth weight lifting is detrimental to said youth, and the science also shows how not only is that myth busted, but quite the opposite is true! Here is a NYT article from 2010 covering this very topic

Phys Ed: The Benefits of Weight Training for Children

An article about how CEO Markus Deutsch and his company Fusion Sport has been listed in the Top 10 “Cutting-Edge Sports Technology Solution Providers, 2019” by Mirror Review. Read the article HERE

A cool little video showcasing some DB drills using our lazer timing gates. Check QB 1 out at their page HERE

QB 1 Mentality came in to see how the SMARTSPEED Pro lazer gates from Fusion Sports could be applied to some of their favorite drills used for their lessons. Stay tuned for when we use these things outside with a QB/WR live drills!