Building Strong Ankles For Mountaineers

Ankle pain and sprains are incredibly common in the mountaineering community. In this episode, I explore five areas of training a mountaineer can use to build up their strength, endurance and resilience in their ankles. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking through some ideas around how a mountaineer can build up strong and resilient ankles.

[0:10] Now, ankle issues are so, so, so common in the mountaineering community. Typically, when talking to mountaineers, this will fall into two very, very broad categories without getting into specific diagnosis or anything like that. But typically, people will complain complain of just general ankle pain or ankle sprains. When they're actually out on the trail, they step in a pothole, they go over the ankle or whatever it may be. And there are lots and lots and lots of different things that can go into the whole idea of preventing these. There's gear, there's fitness, there's techniques, there's a bunch of different things. But today we're going to be diving into specifically the topic of strengthening your ankles and how a mountaineer can use their training to help support their ankles, build them up, reduce the likelihood to pain and sprains coming up and just help them feel a bit more comfortable.

[0:59] Now, I think the reasons why ankle pain and ankle sprains are just so common for mountaineers, you know, it's definitely worthwhile exploring this first, just so you're kind of aware of all the things, you know, potentially working against you when it comes down to this. You know, first and foremost, you know, a lot of mountaineers are obviously out on the trail or out in the mountains, whether they're actually hiking for training, running for training, or actually going out and exploring on their mountaineering adventures. And we all know when you're on the trail, it's not smooth sailing. It is uneven. There's rocks, there's potholes, there's roots, there's a bunch of different things. And this is a factor working against you. Number two is fatigue. A lot of mountaineers, again, whether they're in their training or whether they're actually on the expeditions, they are getting to the stage where they have a lot of fatigue. They're pushing their limits, they're pushing their tiredness.

[1:48] Physically, we can get quite tired and exhausted. And this definitely does increase the chance of us taking a misstep or doing something wrong and getting in pain. On top of that, mentally, as we get tired, we don't concentrate so well. We don't pay attention. We're not really looking where we put our feet, and this definitely adds up. Number three, you know, there's always the potential of just lack of concentration as well, because again, whether we're hiking, running, or actually mountaineering, you know, we're usually somewhere quite nice. We can look around and take in the views. We may have a training buddy or a mountaineering buddy with us. We may be paying attention to, you know, our gear or prepping for a climb or whatever it may be. And maybe we're just not paying attention where we're actually going.

[2:32] Number four, you know, extra external loads, like any extra kilo you put on your back or in your pack is going to add extra stress to the ankles. And this definitely does increase the likelihood of things going wrong. And also finally, high training loads. And this typically falls into the pain category in the sense of mountaineering is an endurance sport. You're doing a lot, a lot, a lot of training if you're really getting the most out of your preparations. And high training loads just ends up being a lot of force through the ankles, hiking, walking, running, whatever it may be. And the ankles end up taking a lot of work. So by themselves, you know, any one of these, probably not a big deal. You know, every sport you go out, you will get fatigued and, you know, lots of different things you'll do. You won't be paying attention. Lots of things you do, you'll have extra external loads. But if you put them all together, which often happens in the mountaineering context, you know, this definitely ends up being a bit of a perfect storm for ankle issues.

[3:24] So it's definitely something to look into if you're aware that you struggle with this, you've got a history of this or whatever it may be.

[3:30] Now, usually the first place people look when it comes down to this type of stuff and they're like, okay, I've got ankle issues. I just need like a quick solution. What can I deal with here? Whether it's sprains or whether it's pains, whatever it may be, is people will look at strapping an ankle brace, or even sometimes, you know, some higher support boots when they're doing their training. So actual full-blown hiking boots, as opposed to trail runners or whatever it may be. And all of these options, you know, they can work. They can be beneficial. They can give some relief. They can give you that external support, but all of them fall into one category. It's kind of like a quick fix solution. It's a band-aid solution. We're kind of just pop in a band-aid over the actual issue. If you're relying on external support from strapping, from braces, from boots, there's nothing wrong using those things.

[4:14] But alongside that, you want to be making sure you're taking steps to build up and support your ankles.

[4:22] Because you don't want to be stuck on relying on these things. And in the situation, if say you don't have access to your boots or you forget your brace or all your taping starts to fall apart or whatever it may be, or maybe you just decide, you know what, I'm sick of this and I just want to get back to my normal being. If we just go from support to no support and we haven't done anything to build ourselves up, well, this is where things go wrong. And this jump in support and jump in difference in stresses, that's where things tend to spiral. and we don't want that. So ultimately, what I'm trying to get at you is if you're an ankle, if you're a mountaineer and you struggle with ankle pain or struggle with ankle sprains, then spending a bit of time with your training, paying attention to this and how you can strengthen this, build this up and get this more resilient is a really, really, really good use of your time.

[5:10] So today we're going to be talking through five different types of strengthening in quotation marks that you can consider for your ankles.

[5:18] Now in a podcast format, I'm going to be talking through a few exercises. I fully understand sometimes audio format, a bit hard to wrap your head around that. So any exercises you're not familiar with, I'll try my best to describe them, but just go onto YouTube, plug them in or reach out. I can send you videos or whatever it may be. But essentially the five areas of strengthening, which can be really beneficial for this are direct ankle strengthening, general leg strengthening, proprioception work, specific endurance work, and there's an optional fifth, which isn't necessary for everyone, but it's definitely worth a while talking about, it's called jumping.

[5:52] So with that being said, let's talk through them. Now, direct ankle strengthening, this is exactly what it sounds like. And this is the first place to look when it comes down to ankle pain or ankle sprains. This involves doing specific exercises, which will directly strengthen the structures and the muscles, which will support the ankles. If we have an ankle issue and you go see a physio, these are probably the things they give you. These are probably the things that you're aware of, and they aren't very, very important. Now, admittedly, some of these things can be a little bit dull, a little bit boring on their own, and this is like one of the issues why a lot of people fall out of them. So, we kind of want to get creative ways around how to fit these things in. For me, for a lot of my mountaineers, I'll just get them to do these in their warm-ups in their training, so they can just get it out of the way, or sometimes in their rest periods in their training, so when they're just sitting around during strength training, give them whatever to do, but we want to make sure we're being consistent. Now, this really falls into categories of anything that's directly going to strengthen the ankle joint. Typically, for my mountaineers, I have three main types of exercises I'll get them to do. Number one, we'll get them to do straight leg calf raises. And every mountaineer, regardless of if they have ankle issues or not, will be doing these. Calves are so important. When it comes to the ankles, they are one of the main supporters. Straight leg calf raises, having your leg straight, pushing up to your toes and down. Two legs, one leg, off a step, off the floor, with a dumbbell, with not, whatever may be. Very, very, very beneficial.

[7:17] I'll typically pair that somewhere else in the week with bent leg calf raises. So similar to a normal calf raise, but we're basically just got our legs bent. This changes the emphasis a little bit, works a little bit lower on the calves, a little bit deeper, very beneficial. So again, we'll do some bent leg calf raises, double-legged or single-legged or off a step or off a floor or with weight or not or whatever. And in all honesty, those two exercises, those those two classifications of exercises, every single one of my mountaineers are doing anyway. Now, when it comes down to specifically ankle issues, you know, sometimes I will get people to do what I call ferraman work. So, basically getting like an exercise band and then just wrap it around your foot and essentially just doing different movements in different directions. So, basically doing a movement to the outside and working eversion and doing like 15, 20 repetitions, then changing the band and moving your ankle to the inside so working inversion and working that and then pointing your toes forward and then pulling your toes back and each time changing the anchor of the band so the idea behind that is we just expose the ankle to these different movements get a little bit of resistance and just strengthen it up through there it's very very simple and then over time with the theraband stuff you can make it heavier and heavier and heavier, with thicker bands or more resistance on the band it's a very very simple thing but just to expose the ankle to slightly different things.

[8:36] So when it comes down to direct ankle strengthening, it doesn't have to be too complicated, but a bit of calf work, a bit of TheraBand work definitely goes a long way.

[8:45] The second thing we want to look at is general leg strengthening. Now, to support the ankles, building up the structure of the ankles, very, very important. But it's also very, very, very beneficial to build up hip and knee stability. Because if we're walking along on the trail and we're going in a tricky situation, and if our hips and our knees can't really stay stable in the situations that we want, sometimes it'll just have a cascade effect down to the ankles. So, we want to build up our hips, we want to build up our knees, and we want to make sure that our ankles ultimately just have the best chance possible of staying stable. On top of that, you know, general leg strengthening is going to be beneficial for so many other areas as well. So, typically when we're looking at this specifically for the ankles and the hips and the knees or whatever it may be, we want to be making sure we're doing some and probably most closed chain exercises in our strength training. And what that means is you're doing an exercise and your foot is connected to the ground.

[9:41] So, in the idea around quadriceps, a closed chain exercise would be a squat because your feet are on the ground. An open chain exercise would be like a leg extension where your actual foot is in that machine and the foot's off the ground. Now, leg extension can be fine for certain things, but in this context, we want to think closed chain and typically single leg exercises. So, things like step downs, very, very great exercise, works the quads, works the hips, very good for ankle stability as well. Single-legged deadlift works the hamstrings, works the glutes, very good for ankle stability as well. You know, this type of stuff. All of these exercises, they're typically in a normal mountaineers training program, but we want to think about, okay, if you are going through a strength training program and if you have issues with your ankles and if all the stuff you're doing is maybe, machine-based or if all the stuff you're doing is maybe just double-legged, then maybe we want to think about incorporating a bit of this single-legged stuff and a bit of this closed chain stuff as well.

[10:39] Pretty simple. Number three, if you have ankle issues, we want to think about proprioception. Essentially, proprioception is the awareness of the position or your awareness of the position and movement of your body. Very similar balance. It's kind of just knowing where the body is. And this is really, really, really important for uneven terrain. The tricky thing with this is we will all naturally have a level of proprioception. If you have a history of ankle sprains.

[11:07] As you sprain your ankle, typically our proprioception will get impacted. And if you do it again and again and again, typically your proprioception probably isn't amazing. And the tricky thing with this is if it's not so good, you will have less likely chance of sensing if things are just not right when you're stepping on the trail. If you step in a pothole, you know, that instant of noticing, oh my gosh, the foot's not there. The ground's not there. What do I do? You may be a bit slower on that, or if you step on a loose rock. And also on top of that, you may have a worse chance of just catching yourself if things do go wrong. If that rock slips out from you, you've got to react very, very quickly. And if that proprioception is down, may not be able to do that. So if you do have a history of ankle sprains specifically, doing a bit of proprioception work can be very useful. Now this stuff, it's really, really, really simple. You don't have to spend a huge amount of outrageous time at all crazy exercises for this, but it can be pretty simple. The most simple place to start is just standing on one leg and essentially just stand on one leg, hands on your hips, and just hold that. Some people will be able to do that for days and days and days. If so, great. If you can't do that, that's your place to start. And you want to practice that until you can comfortably do that for 60 seconds on each side without falling over. Now, once you reach that 60 seconds, then the next step is you're going to do exactly the same thing, but you're going to close your eyes.

[12:30] Stand on one leg, eyes closed, try to hold that. That's going to significantly make things more difficult. And that is going to take all the visual component out of it. And you'll be like, wow, that's pretty tough. For that one, again, if you can do 60 seconds, happy days, you're great. If you can't quite get 60 seconds, this is something that's worthwhile challenging yourself. Because as you practice this, not only will you be building up the proprioception,

[12:56] but your body and ankle will be just going through different movements. You'll be stabilizing yourself through different movements and it ends up being a really solid workout, solid exercise for a bunch of different reasons. Now, once you can manage that for 60 seconds, the next step is then we want to add a bit of instability. So instead of just being on the floor, and we want to do this all barefoot by the way, but instead of just being on the floor, we want to basically introduce maybe a pillow and we stand on the pillow or maybe get a yoga mat and roll that up a couple of times. Or maybe if you have a stability disc or a BOSU ball or whatever, and you go back to opened eyes, but we stand on that kind of slightly unstable surface.

[13:35] Already, we'll notice that's a challenge. Already, we'll notice like, oh, that's wobbling around. And this is one of the best uses of these type of stability things. I don't like BOSU balls or stability discs for general strength training, but when we're directly trying to work proprioception, this can be useful. So again, you may do this and just try to build up to 60 seconds. Happy days. Then the next step, you can build up to closed highs on the stability disc. Like that is tough and that is really tricky. But if you can do that, nailing it. Then the next step, you can kind of think about, okay, I can be on that stability disc or I can be on that instability. And instead of me just standing still, I can get a weight and maybe I can pass it around my hips and do little circles around my hips. Or maybe I can just change the different dynamics of the body and the body has to balance around. There's lots of different ways you can play around with this, but the key is just finding a level that you can start at, which is a genuine challenge for you. And then as it gets more easier, you progress, you progress, you progress, and you can make this really, really difficult. But that's number three. If you struggle with ankle issues, and this is specifically like really, really, really important for people who struggle with ankle sprains, make sure you're doing this and building it up.

[14:42] Number four. So we talked about direct ankle strengthening. Pretty simple. We talked about general leg strengthening.

[14:50] Every mountaineer should be doing that anyway. We talked about proprioception work. Doesn't take a huge amount of time. Just fit that in your warmups or your rest periods or whatever it may be. Next up, we've got specific endurance work. So all the stuff we've mentioned so far is just stuff you will do as part of your strength training at the gym, at home, or whatever it may be. But obviously, when we look at the mountaineering context, there is a little bit of a difference between the ankles being stable and being comfortable for a few minutes per exercise when we're doing our calf raises or a balance or whatever it may be, and being stable and comfortable hours and hours and hours on the mountain.

[15:27] Obviously a bit of a difference for this reason we want to make sure that we are still exposing the ankles and the body in general to training which will kind of bridge that gap between the general work we're doing in the gym or at home and then what we actually need on the mountain, now what i'm about to explain it's stuff that every single mountaineer should be doing anyway.

[15:48] But in the ankle context, we just want to think about it. At the most basic, basic level, we want to make sure somewhere in our cardio, and I call this mountaineering specific cardio, we are exposing the ankles to the specific challenges it will be faced on the mountain. We want to make sure we're exposing it to the challenge of having that extra load on the pack, on our back, in our pack. And we want to make sure we're doing sessions where we slowly but surely build up that pack weight. The thing about, you know, tendons, the thing about stability, the thing about all of that, it takes time to develop. It is very slow. So we want slow and steady exposure to that pack weight building up over time. On top of that, we want to make sure we expose the body to elevation challenges, so up and down. So the ankles will go through certain forces when we're going up steep hills, when we're going up steep steps. On top of that, the ankles will definitely be exposed to many, many forces on the way down as well. So again, in our training, we want to make sure where are we getting this? Are we doing stairs or heels, stair master, step sessions, whatever may be? Are we exposing the body to just going up, but also going down as well? And then number three, duration challenges. And what I mean by this is we want to be making sure that we are exposing the ankles to just being happy to move and take force for hours and hours and hours.

[17:07] In all honesty, these three things should be covered in every single mountaineer's training. But if you are a mountaineer who struggles with ankle pain and you might be missing something like this and maybe you're not really doing a huge amount of pack weight or maybe you're not really doing much elevation or you're not getting any exposure to descents downhills or maybe you're doing all these stuff in the gym and you can't actually get out for longer hikes and the longest you've gone is two or three hours and your expedition is going to get you up to seven or eight hours well this is all really important stuff to think about so we need to consider that and then on top of that to take that a step further then we kind of want to think about okay getting exposure to the uneven surfaces that we have out on the trail so if you're doing.

[17:50] Training hikes, or if you're doing trail runs, this is pretty good. You'll probably get exposed to this and that's all good. But if you're not, if you're doing most of your training on really manicured trails, if you're doing most of your training in the gym, well, then you need to think about, okay, how can I get some exposure to uneven surfaces? Even if I can't go do massive training hikes on a super long trail, is there anything nearby where I can actually get exposure? Is there like a dried riverbed, which I can go up and down, you know, for half an hour, 40 minutes? 40 minutes is obviously not quite the same as multiple hours, but it could be an option. Am I near the beach? Could I go do walking on the sand? Again, those forces aren't exactly the same, but it'll give a bit of challenge to the ankles. Have a think about where can you find some uneven surfaces? And if you are a little bit limited, and specifically if you're not doing a huge amount of hiking or trail running or whatever it may be, you may need to get a bit creative here.

[18:53] And then number five, final thing, this is optional. Like this can be really, really, really good. And for mountaineers who do struggle with ankle pain, this can be a great option, but it isn't 100% necessary. In all honesty, I've had loads of mountaineers in the past who've never even touched this stuff and we've made massive and dramatic and comfortable changes to their ankles, just doing that basic stuff, just building up their direct ankle strength, just building up their general strength, doing proprioception work, and doing their specific endurance work. Most of my mountaineers will just do that in ankle situations. However, if you're aware that, like, I'm already doing those four things, my ankles are still a bit of an issue, or maybe I want to be covering all of my bases, well, the next step is jumping. Jumping involves exactly that, doing different types of jumps, which will expose the ankles to slightly higher impacts and slightly higher forces and just get them happier to stabilize with that and obviously as a mountaineer we're not doing a huge amount of jumping on the trail but the idea here is just overload the ankles teach it to react teach it to get stronger teach it to be happier.

[19:57] And jumping can be a really good way of going about this. Now, there are a million, million, million ways you can approach this. And there are a million different exercises when it comes down to jumping on how you could expose the bodies to this type of stuff. And I was thinking about how I want to talk about this. And I figured I would just do a really, really, really simple approach that anyone just listening doesn't even have to see the exercise, but they'll basically be able to figure it out. And this could be a really simple progression plan you start. Number one, if you want to introduce this jumping. You could just start by just doing little hops on one foot. And what I mean by that, it's kind of like you're skipping on one leg, but you're just doing it in place. Do 15, 20, 30 hops at a time, whatever's doable. And you're just hopping, hopping, hopping on space. They're not big, they're not massive, they're just little hops.

[20:41] Then once you're comfortable with that, you've done that for a week or two, then you could try hopping forward and back on one foot. So instead of just being on one spot, you've got a line on the floor and you just hop forward and back. In front of the line, back of the line and go with that. You'll notice immediately that's quite a bit more challenging. And you'll be like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. And that'll take a little while to get used to. Do that for a couple of weeks. Next up, keep that same line. But what we're going to do is hop side to side and go side, side, over the line, over the line and go in laterally. This is usually one that can be tricky for people who don't do deal with ankle sprains. So be conservative here. See how you go and take it easy.

[21:21] But that can be quite good and then from there we can sort of start putting this together and we can maybe do a little figure eight where we go side to forward forward side side forward forward side side or people to seeing people do a little like star um or whatever it may be or a little like cross and they just go around the cross or whatever may be um yeah and you can start putting that together forward and back and side to side and this and that and slowly build that up and then once you're confident with that you've gone through a few different movements then you can go back to the top, you can start putting a bit more oomph into the movements. So instead of just doing little hops, you start to get like little medium hops. They're not 100% explosive, but they're little medium hops. Then you go forward and back, but you do slightly bigger hops, side to side, slightly bigger hops. And then you can keep on rotating through these until it turns into significant, almost jumps. Most mountaineers probably don't need to get to that level where we're actually really, really exploding out of it, but you kind of get it in theory.

[22:18] Now a few things to be aware of here for the jumping if it causes you pain pull it back what i mean by this is so many mountaineers they'll be like okay.

[22:29] If I have an issue, I've been told this can be good for it. I do it. It's uncomfortable. I'm just going to push through it. I don't know what it is about mountaineers, but it's a very, very common thing. So if it causes you pain, you don't want to be doing that. You want to pull it back. Either make the hop smaller, do less repetitions, or go back to those four first things that I was talking about before, build that up, and then introduce the hopping a little bit further down the line. Number two, this type of stuff, we are looking at small doses of good work. These aren't marathon cardio sessions where you're getting like hundreds and hundreds of reps. This is like 20 reps at a time. Small doses of good work. Number three, we want to do this when we're fresh. So this isn't something we want to do when we're tired, but we want to concentrate, pay attention, and perform well. So typically, I would recommend if you're doing the hopping in your strength training, do your warm-ups. Get your blood moving. Do your mobility. If you're doing some little stability exercises like some glute work or some core work or whatever, get that all done. and then do this before you start lifting. So that way you're fully warm, you're fully fresh and then you can just bang this out. Very, very simple.

[23:35] So there we go. If you're a mountaineer who does struggle with ankle pains or ankle sprains, these are five things that can help. A lot of this should be covered in your training already. And this is why I talk about training for mountaineering in the way I talk about it. Because if we do good, solid strength training, if we do good, solid mountaineering specific conditioning, we kind of cover so many bases which are applicable to not just your fitness and your conditioning but to your ankles to your feet to your knees to your hips to all of this different stuff so if you struggle with ankle pain and you're not doing any of these things now you know where to think about as i said for any of the exercises i mentioned today if you're not sure of them check them out on youtube or flick me an email i'm happy to send us send over videos or whatever may be and hopefully that'll get you sorted last thing i will sort of say wrapping this up, if you're a mountaineer who does struggle with ankle sprains, ankle pain, or whatever it may be, and you're like, look, I just need a bit of personalized help here. I need some ideas around how to put this all together in a way that's going to work for me, my goals, and my needs, then I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit more about our online personal training for mountaineers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a big video, talks through our programs in a bit, and if it does sound like something you want to explore a little bit more, there's a link on that page. You can book a free call with our team, and we can sit down and learn about you, your situation, your needs, and your mountaineering, and see if and how we may be able to help you out. So if you want to check that out, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there.

[25:04] So thank you so much for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.
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