Among the most common injuries in youth and high school sports are ankle injuries, which vary from sprains and strains to fractures and breaks.

More than anything, though, young athletes find themselves limping because of a sprain. Typically described as “rolling an ankle,” this can result simply from landing awkwardly or stepping on another person’s foot.

USA Football head athletic trainer and St. Vincent Sports Performance Outreach Supervisor Dave Weikel recommends these three exercises to strengthen ankles to help prevent injuries:

• Resistance bands. Use a resistance band to move in all four motions with the foot. Start off with inversion and eversion movements (moving the foot in and out). The other two motions are plantar and dorsi flexions. For these exercises, push the foot down and pull toes up using the appropriate amount of resistance.
• Toe raises. Stand on a flat surface and rise up onto your toes. After mastering this, advance to a more challenging toe raise by using a higher surface, such as a step or on a secure box. Stand on the higher surface with heels hanging off the edge , then lower the ankles below the level of the higher surface so that the foot is completely flexed, finally rising up onto the toes. To make this more challenging, do one foot at a time to work on balance as well.
• Single-leg balance. Use a flat surface or, as Weikel suggests, “balancing can also be done on a non-stable surface like a foam pad or pillow, or trampoline.” Single-leg balancing focuses on muscles in the ankles up through the leg, which increase overall leg strength and improve balance to help prevent ankle injuries.

Just as with other injuries, there are steps to adhere to in the recovery process.

“The key is reducing the swelling as quickly as possible. That will allow you to work on motion and strengthening,” Weikel said. “For more severe sprains, compression and elevation are more important than icing.” 

After decreasing pain and swelling, work on getting motion back. From there, recovery exercises are similar to the strengthening exercises listed above.

Use muscles – not an over-reliance of tape – to secure the ankle. It is said that braces and tape can sometimes weaken the muscles around the ankle because the athlete relies too much on them.

“Unless the athlete has a history of ankle injuries, I typically only tape them for games if they want it,” Weikel said.