Rolling an ankle is generally quite painful. Swelling and bruising also usually occur, developing near the injured area. While you may not think of it as a sprained, strained or twisted ankle, these types of different terminology are commonly used to describe the same injury.

Instead of landing at an awkward angle, a rolled ankle generally happens to an individual during a sport or activity with plenty of stop and go action, where players are planting their feet and changing directions quite often. High impact sports such as soccer, football, basketball, volleyball and baseball all have moments where the chances of rolling your ankle is quite likely.

With that being said,  those specific sports aren’t always the source of a rolled or sprained ankle. Your injury may have happened while you were walking, running, performing a yoga pose, taking a step class, skating during a competition – and so on- the point is, regardless of how you rolled your ankle, you’re here to get it healed up as fast as possible, aren’t you?

Rolled Ankle Types & Symptoms

Rolled ankles generally fall into two different categories – inversion and eversion sprains:

Inversion Ankle Sprain – An inversion ankle sprain is when your ankle becomes inverted, or falls inward. This motion ends up stretching your outer, or lateral, ligaments. Inversion ankle sprains are very common, and make up about 90% of all sprained ankles each year. Thankfully, it’s also one of the least complicated to treat and rehab, which makes recovery time much shorter, depending on the severity of the sprain.

Eversion Ankle Sprain – As you may have already guessed, an eversion ankle sprain is the exact opposite. This injury occurs when your foot is twisted outward, which puts too much stress on your inner deltoid ligament, stretching it beyond what it’s capable of withstanding. The pain is generally located on the inside of your ankle, as you’d probably expect, where the stretching originally occurred.

Symptoms will vary sightly, depending on the severity of your injury, and how exactly it happened. While swelling, bruising and pain are almost always present, you’ll most likely have a varying combination of all three.

The pain might be quite severe, with general swelling, but not much bruising. Or the pain may be much more tolerable, while the bruising and swelling are both relatively severe. Again, you’re own unique body, and the degree of your injury will determine the severity of your symptoms.

Rolled Ankle Treatment & Rehabilitation

Now we’re getting to the good stuff- this section of the article will be finished up upon completion of our A.C.T. ankle rehabilitation program. Please check back within the coming weeks. Thank you.

If you think that you may have a high ankle sprain, great care needs to be taken when assessing the damage your leg and ankle have sustained. We’ll be taking you through some of the most basic steps to follow, as well as some explanations of what may have happened, but whenever a syndesmotic injury has occurred, it’s best to get an X-ray taken before starting any type of rehabilitation or treatment process.

While it may feel like you have a high ankle sprain, in many cases, it’s more than likely a common lateral ligament sprain. The area that is regularly referred to as the “high ankle” is composed of several different ligaments and connective tissues, most of which aren’t as flexible, and are stronger than the ligaments affected in a lateral sprain. High ankle sprains make up between 5-10% of all ankle sprains, classifying them as a pretty rare occurrence.

How Is A High Ankle Sprain Different?

When compared to a more conventional sprain, high ankle sprains usually require a longer recovery time. This is largely due to the complexity of the sprain itself. Rest and recovery can take up to twice as long, depending on how much damage you’ve sustained.

The structure of the lower leg, as well as the upper ankle, are the two areas that are most affected, which is why this injury is  commonly referred to as a high ankle sprain. While the amount of rest you choose to take should fit in with your goals and schedule, it’s a good idea to go in for an evaluation with a licensed physician or physical therapist. This will be your best bet for correctly assessing the injury. Additionally, the doctor you see will most likely take an  X-ray to make the most accurate assessment. This will ensure that it’s safe to begin rehab sooner, rather than later.

Is There An Alternative Treatment For High Ankle Sprains?

Generally speaking, the same treatment and rehabilitation plan should be used for all ankle sprains. Whether it is a common, or more uncommon sprain, your recovery procedure will stay the same. Alternatively, you may need to rest a while longer, before starting your actual rehabilitation, but that will likely be the only difference.

Now, if you’ve internally damaged a nerve, or have stress fractures, it is not a good idea to start rehabbing your ankle right away. Like we mentioned above, if you have any doubt at all, we highly recommend visiting a licensed medical doctor, so he or she can assess your injury.

You can always bookmark the site to come back and rehabilitate your ankle later. There’s no sense in starting if you won’t get results, is there? Proper assessment, followed by a proactive, step-by-step rehab system will yield the most desirable results every time.

A swollen ankle is most commonly a symptom of a sprain, which has affected the surrounding ligaments, connective tissue and supporting muscles. As long as you don’t have any other underlying medical conditions, and you’ve sustained an injury lately, the two almost always go hand-in-hand. Generally speaking, as the severity of a sprain increases, so does the swelling.

While ankle sprains may seem simple enough, they truly require proper, dedicated attention, especially when they first happen. The body does it’s best to heal and rebind your ligaments for you, but left untreated, sprained ankles are notorious for being prone to future injury and pain. Before we dive into that however, let’s learn a little more about swelling.

Why Do Ankles Swell After Injury?

The actual swelling of your ankle is a combination of a few different natural functions of your body. While bruising can also occur, it mainly depends on your own individual body, and the severity of your injury. The swelling is a natural form of edema that occurs when a specific body part is injured, or undergoes some sort of trauma. (In this case, the ankle.)

To a degree, this accumulation of serous fluid and formation of excessive fibrous tissue is beneficial, but only for a short amount of time. This natural reactive process generally leads to tightness and limited mobility within the ankle joint, resulting in a much longer recovery period.

What Should I Do First?

While it isn’t possible for us to fully comprehend your sprain, the majority of sprained ankles can be treated at home with proactive care, ice, stretching, exercises and other forms of rehabilitation. Using the right techniques, strategies and exercises is absolutely vital though. This is why we recommend taking advantage of our step-by-step, seven day rehabilitation system.

However, to start off, our first order of business is to get the swelling in your ankle down. As we mentioned above, this excessive accumulation of fluid and fibrous material is only beneficial for a short amount of time. Once your body has gone through the process, it’s vitally important to relieve the swelling and begin the healing process.

A twisted ankle is essentially the same injury as a sprained or strained ankle. Put simply, all of these descriptions are of the same event. The only difference is the terminology being used to explain the action. While this may seem a little confusing at first, you’ll begin to understand once we get into a few explanations.

What Is A Twisted Ankle?

Twisted ankles are generally classified as damage that has been done to the supporting muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue in (you guessed it) the ankle.  However, the source of the injury can vary widely. Depending on your daily activities, it may have happened walking, biking, playing a specific sport, following an unorthodox fall, the possibilities are pretty endless.

Thankfully, it doesn’t matter how you twisted your ankle, the treatment and rehabilitation process is the same for most ankle injuries that haven’t resulted in a broken bone.

Initial Sprained Ankle Treatment

Following the initial sprain, you’re bound to have some swelling, pain and possibly bruising if you came down with enough force on your ankle. These are all very normal signs that your body has undergone some sort of trauma and is attempting to recover. While your body does it’s best to fix your ankle on its own, we need to provide some help in the healing process for everything to come full-circle.

Rehabilitation is where you’ll regain most of your ankle strength, which will involve stretching, massage and corrective exercises, but first, we need to deal with the swelling and pain.

Hydrotherapy is a very important piece to the puzzle, and should we utilized the same day as your injury. This technique will begin to ease swelling, and pull in nutrient-rich blood to begin the healing and restrengthening process.

It’s a medical fact that ligament injuries are much more serious than muscle injuries. The muscles in your body tend to have ample blood supply, resulting in faster healing times and less proactive treatment.  As a very simple example, think weight lifting in the gym. Even though it’s not exactly an injury, you’re essentially breaking down your muscles in hopes that your body repairs them to become larger and stronger.

What really surprised us, before we put together our own ankle rehab program, was the fact that so many individuals are still having moderate ankle pain months, sometimes years after their injury. Even though ankle sprains are one of the most common daily injuries, there seems to be no common knowledge on how you should treat and rehabilitate your ankle.

Without following an ankle rehab program, ankle ligaments only heal to around 50-70 percent strength when they are injured. (Andriacchi, T. Injury and Repair of the Musculoskeletal Soft Tissues. Park Ridge, IL: AAOS; 1987; 103-108.) Armed with this knowledge, it’s easy to see that you dramatically restrict results by following the general idea that it’s correct to only rest, ice, compress and elevate your ankle.  Ankle instability can even lead to degenerative ankle arthritis later in life, if not properly treated from the onset.

Why Ankle Rehab is Essential

As we’ve outlined in the previous paragraphs, your ankle ligaments can be pretty stubborn when it comes to healing. And since ligaments are the most commonly injured portion of the ankle, it’s quite important that you begin rehabbing the very same day as your injury.

Ligaments are generally not as skilled at regenerating themselves effectively. When any sort of injury is sustained, your ankle ligaments start to heal by using a process known as scar tissue to bind together damaged fibers with collagen. While this may sound natural, it’s honestly a very ineffective healing process.

This scar tissue is the main reason why so many individuals tend to re-injure their ankle. The collagen your body uses to repair the damage is weak and quite inelastic. This collection of scar tissue is an ineffective replacement for a healthy, strong ligament, which is why you need to treat your ankle before it sets in.

Preventing Scar Tissue Formation

Now, with all this talk about damaged ligaments, ankle sprains, and scar tissue, you may be feeling a little uneasy at this point. Don’t worry, you can flush that feeling from your system because we have the answers and knowledge to steer you on the right path to full recovery. Thankfully, scar tissue formation is very easy to prevent. As long as you stay active, and proactive, with your recovery and rehabilitation, you can avoid chronic injury and restrengthen your ankle much faster.

There are also a bunch of other techniques and strategies for helping to prevent and breakup scar tissue, but we’ll save the bulk of the instruction for when you get started with our rehab program.

Since ankle sprains are one of the most common injuries within the general population, they have a strong tendency to development into a chronic sprained ankle. Without following the correct rehabilitation steps, you’ll more than likely develop the same problem.

The word chronic refers to a persistent, long-lasting pain that can return to your ankle  with the slightest awkward movement, no matter what activity you’re participating in. This problem tends to arise due to your ankle’s weakness, more than likely from a previous ankle sprain.

If you’re into sports or going to the gym, you’ve probably crossed paths with  someone complaining about their ankle never being the same after a sprain. This is due to the fact they never took the time to properly heal their sprained ankle by going to a physical therapist, or on their own with an advanced rehabilitation program.

How Can I Avoid a Chronic Ankle Injury?

Following a proactive sprained ankle treatment program is the only way to avoid chronic ankle pain. By applying the right knowledge and important exercises, the ligaments, muscles and tendons surrounding your ankle can be restrengthened within a very short amount of time.

Most experts agree that chronic ankle pain is a direct result from improper rehabilitation practice. This is why it’s vitally important that you get on started on the right path to recovery as soon as possible, preferably the same day as your injury.

Why We Recommend the H.E.M. Ankle Program

While visiting a physical therapist can be effective, it can end up costing you hundreds of dollars, even if a portion of the rehab is covered by insurance.  This is why we highly recommend purchasing the H.E.M. ankle rehabilitation guide.

This comprehensive program, formulated and assembled by certified personal trainer Scott Malin, shows you exactly what to do from the time you injure your ankle, all the way through to your full recovery. It’s been proven to cut down on recovery time and allows you to completely avoid a chronic ankle injury. To learn more, click here, or on the banner below.

Another very common question we get a lot around here has to do with ankle braces. Many individuals would like to know if they are useful, and when it is a good time to use a brace.

Generally, it’s not a good idea to fully rely on a brace, yet, they can come in handy in the short-term. Depending on the severity of your ankle sprain, it may be in your best interest to use an ankle brace, or correctly tape up your ankle for extra support, if you’ll be partaking in any physical activity that you can’t or don’t want to avoid.

This may include a big volleyball, basketball, baseball or soccer game that’s coming up, or simply a concert, event or movie premiere you want to go to. In this case, you’ll want to get started with a sprained ankle rehabilitation program right away, and think about getting ankle braces to help add some support on the day of high activity.

Why You Shouldn’t Just Rely On Ankle Braces

Picture this: you’ve just sprained your ankle pretty badly, but instead of starting rehab, like you should do, you take off a few days from any physical activity, pick up an ankle brace, and slap it on during most of your daily activities. Now, in the short-term, it may benefit you to have some extra support, but what happens when you no longer wear the brace?

When you sprain your ankle, the muscles, ligaments and tendons surrounding the affected area are severely weakened. If you simply rely on an ankle brace for support, you’ll never get the mobility and strength back in the injured ankle. This also increases the chance of you spraining the same ankle again in the future, which is commonly referred to as a chronically sprained ankle.

Getting Started With An Ankle Rehab Program Today

If you’ve had any type of serious injury before you most likely went through and did rehabilitation exercises to help strength back up the affected area.If you didn’t, you certainly should have. Mobility and strength are two vitally important pieces to the overall puzzle, especially when it comes to ankles. When one is affected, both are dramatically reduced.

Whether you’ve sprained your ankle within the past few days, or still have a nagging ankle injury from the pasty, following the right rehabilitation program can work wonders for restoring mobility, improving strength, and repairing ligament weakness. This is why we recommend the H.E.M. ankle rehabilitation program.

Unlike the R.I.C.E. system, H.E.M. is a proactive, highly effective rehab program that gets you up and walking normally again within only a few days. By following and understanding the correct exercises and instructions, you can efficiently work with your body to give it exactly what it craves to speed up your recovery time.

And instead of paying hundreds of dollars to go to an expensive physical therapist, all you pay is $20, which ends up saving you a ton of money over the course of your rehabilitation. To learn more about H.E.M., click here, or on the banner below this article.

Your body is made up of many different organs, connective tissue, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. This includes the area surrounding both of your ankles. Your ankle is made up of a few key areas, that include ligaments, tendons, muscles and other supporting connective tissue.

However, when most individuals sprain their ankle, the most damaged area includes the ligaments that connect the ankle bones. Tendons and supporting muscles in the area can also be affected, but the ligaments are usually most damaged, and require direct rehabilitation exercise to be properly healed, and strengthened.

Anterior Talofibular Ligament

In most sprains, the anterior talofibular ligament is most commonly injured. This ligament connects the front part of a large, major bone of the leg, the fibula, to the talus bone, the front-outer part of the ankle joint itself.

For those of us that appreciate knowing what joints, ligaments and tendons are directly affected, this information may satisfy that need to know specifically what an ankle sprain is.

However, on the flip side, you may simply be thinking, “Okay, sure, that makes sense, but I’m here to get my ankle healed up fast, not necessarily learn about it.” Don’t lose faith in us yet, we’re just getting to the good stuff!

How to Restrengthen Your Ligaments

Once you’ve sprained your ankle, the first step to proper rehabilitation is to assess the damage. If you can bare slight weight, and have a pain level no higher than a seven or eight (on a one to ten scale), you can most likely handle rehabilitation on your own.

Although, it is generally a good idea to go in to see your doctor, to make sure you don’t have any cracks, stress fractures, or completely broken bones. Once you’re cleared of these major, much more urgent injuries, you’re free to start your own ankle rehabilitation.

While your coach, trainer, or even your doctor may suggest following the R.I.C.E. technique, this form of treatment is greatly outdated, and really is only affective for the first day or two of proper rehabilitation.The right knowledge and strategy are the most important aspects of  effective recovery.

The simple fact is, the R.I.C.E. technique been around so long that we’ve had major breakthroughs in the meantime, both in fitness and sports therapy, that have introduced us to new ways of thinking, and dealing with injuries.

Investing in an Ankle Rehabilitation Program

We’ve put in a lot of time and effort into finding the best sprained ankle rehab program. To ensure the greatest benefits, many individuals tend to opt for visiting a rehab center, or a physical therapist. While this can be an effective method, it can cost hundreds over the course of your rehabilitation, and generally is taken at a pretty slow pace.

“Just to be safe,” the rehab clinic may say. To their credit, they will generally know the correct techniques and procedures you’ll benefit most from, which will help you heal up faster than conventional treatment. In reality though, each and every visit continues to cost you money, not usually covered by insurance.  This is why we recommend taking matters into your own hands, and opting to undertake your own rehab.

Which System We Ultimately Recommend

At this time, our only recommendation is to follow the H.E.M. ankle rehab program, which only costs a mere $20. It’s a complete rehabilitation guide that was formulated by a nationally accredited, certified personal trainer named Scott Malin. This prominent program has helped thousands of individuals from all walks of life, rehab their ankle in the quickest time possible.

The “HEM” stands for hydrotherapy, exercise and movement, three vitally important, key ingredients to an effective ankle rehabilitation. These techniques have been discovered in recent years to provide the quickest results in both healing, strength and recovery time.

To learn more about the H.E.M. rehab program, click on the image below to hear more about the system, and get a more in-depth analysis of what is all included. Remember, the most effective way to heal your ankle is to get started on your  rehab the very same day as your injury. By investing in a quality, effective rehab system, you can feel confident in your near-future results.

Over 20,000 people in the United States alone sprain an ankle every single day. And that’s not even counting the rest of the world.

It’s certainly safe to say that a sprained ankle is a very common injury.

Although, the sad part is, once many individuals sprain their ankle, they don’t have the right knowledge and strategies on how to correctly treat it.

A friend may recommend them to follow the R.I.C.E. program, or simply “stay off it for a while.”

While both of these techniques may initially be helpful and relieve some pain, once your swelling has gone down, you need the right rehab program to properly restrengthen your ankle.

Most People Struggle With Healing Their Ankle

Why do you think so many people re-sprain the same ankle over and over again? It’s simply because they didn’t follow the correct rehabilitation procedure, exercises and overall therapy schedule that was most effective to truly rehabilitate their injury.

Once the ankle has been injured, the stretched tendons and surrounding stabilizing muscles usually have become quite weak. Of course, depending on the severity of your injury, the level of weakness will vary, but this structural damage is the key. The secret to effective rehab is strengthening this area with the right knowledge and techniques.

If you don’t know what your body responds best to, how can you effectively treat an ankle sprain in the first place? The answer is simple, you can’t, at least not as effectively as you should. It’s just like anything else you’ve ever had to learn in your life. Without the correct knowledge of how to do something, you won’t know the right strategies  to utilize.

Thankfully, This is Why We’re Here to Help

We’re not mentioning all of this information because we want you to feel like you can’t properly rehabilitate your ankle. You absolutely can, but only with the most effective treatment routine. Here at the Sprained Ankle Institute, we currently only have one rehabilitation program that we strongly recommend, it’s called the H.E.M. rehab program.

The H.E.M. sprained ankle treatment program is a comprehensive system that gives you all the knowledge you need to truly heal your ankle, and in most cases, strengthen it up even more than it was before your injury.

This 12 section, 140 page effectively guide walks you through the proper rehab process, gives you nutritional recommendations, and even includes a whole section on prehabilitation exercises that will help you keep strengthening your ankle, even after it’s back to normal. And since it costs less than a single trip to the physical therapist (less than $20), you’ll be saving quite a bit of money of the course of your rehab.

If you’d like to get started today, or would simply like more details, feel free to click here, or on the banner below. This will take you over to a page with more information, and even a short message from one of our main research guides.

If you have any questions before ordering, feel free to hop over to our support page. Remember though, effective ankle rehab includes getting started right away. You really can’t afford to wait!

When you first sprain your ankle, it’ll most likely swell and become quite painful, depending on the severity of the injury.

The swelling is your body’s natural reaction to your ligaments being stretched farther than they’re accustomed to. (FYI, a ligament is the elastic structure in your foot that holds your ankle joint and bones in place.)

Ankle sprains can literally happen anywhere, at anytime throughout your day. Walking downtown, catching your ankle awkwardly on a curb, stepping up or down a flight of stairs at work, playing any type of sport, or even when you wake up in the middle of the night and groggily stumble to get some water from the fridge.

All it takes is stepping down when you’re off balance, or planting your foot unevenly to momentarily stretch the ligaments and surrounding tissue in your ankle, causing the injury.

Average Sprained Ankle Recovery Time

When using conventional sprained ankle treatments, most individuals end up healing their ankle within a few months at the most, which is the general sprained ankle recovery time. Again, this all depends on the severity of the ankle sprain though. Some may even begin to feel better within the first  two to three weeks, it’ll just vary.

Even though the R.I.C.E. rehabilitation technique has been suggested for years now by doctors and trainers alike, we don’t recommend it for rehabbing your ankle. It’s simply way too outdated, and virtually useless past the first day of ankle sprain.

This is because the R.I.C.E. formula prescribes rest, ice, compression and elevation, all forms of treatment for the symptoms of the sprained ankle, not the actual cause of the problem. (When the cause is actually the ligaments and surrounding structure being injured.)

During the initial injury period, icing your ankle is definitely important, but after the first day or two, as your ankle begins to shrink back to its normal size, R.I.C.E. simply tells you to rest and wait for it to heal naturally.

But what about the scar tissue that’s building up around your ankle joint, making it weak and vulnerable for future injury? Or the ligaments that are now extremely weak, which also leads to going through this entire process again, pain included. As you can see, R.I.C.E. leaves far too much up to chance.

What’s the Answer for the Ultimate Ankle Rehabilitation?

We strongly recommend the H.E.M. ankle rehabilitation system for all individuals who have sprained an ankle. The H.E.M. program is a revolutionary rehab and prehab information guide that was developed and designed by certified personal trainer, Scott Malin.

H.E.M. stands for the hydrotherapy, exercise, and massage, three vitally important rehabilitation aspects when rehabbing a sprained ankle. Mr. Malin also takes time to make general recommendations, and even goes through an entire prehabilitation routine, step-by-step, to ensure your ankles are even stronger than before your sprain.

If you’d like to learn more about the H.E.M. rehab program, feel free to click here to be taken to our analysis of the full routine. We’ll be sure to walk you through everything the rehab system includes. You can also hear from past users, as well as studies that have been done surrounding recovery times. There’s no time to waste, head on over there now.