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Ankle Stability for Trail Running
Ankle injuries can happen in a number of different ways. They can occur during an acute injury or simply by twisting our ankle during a long run. In order to avoid this, a person needs to practice to get the proper ankle stability.
When an athlete performs any movements either running or jumping, the ankle around our muscles does the whole work. If the ankle is strong, you can always carry on a couple of miles without having an injury or lose strength. Moreover, it also strengthens the lower leg muscles. This is important when your are running uphill or downhill.
Most of the time, people who are running downhill tends to lose their balance and focus because we have to look at our feet to get the balance we need. But this can be avoided! When you get the balance and allow your body to be familiarize with the space, we can then avoid looking down instead just focus on the track.
This video below shows you how your body should be when running downhill and some workout that you can do in preparation.
Workouts to do:
- Single Foot Balance
- Step sideways with band
- One foot drop offs
Trail running also requires a large amount of Stability for the downhills as well as all the variable terrain. Proprioception is a sense of where your body is as determined by the conscious feedback it receives from muscular, tendon, and articular sources and the unconscious feedback from the cerebellum of your brain. It is a great idea to train some ankle stability of the trail so you are ready to perform at your highest level. AND don’t forget about the hips- glute activation/ stability plays roll in downhill running success.
I hope this video helps!