Balance exercises good for ankle sprains

Those who have suffered an ankle sprain can significantly cut their chances of spraining their ankle again by doing balancing exercises.
Ankle sprains are common injuries that may be costly to treat. Athletes are particularly at high risk of repeat injury in the first year after an ankle sprain.

To study the effectiveness of an unsupervised, in-home 8-week training programme, involving a series of exercises to improve balance and motor coordination skills in preventing re-injury to the ankle, researchers studied 522 Dutch athletes (274 men and 248 women) aged between 12 and 70 years old who had suffered a sprained ankle in the two months before entering the study.

All of them received usual rehabilitative care for an ankle sprain and an intervention group of 256 athletes also performed three 30-minute balance-training sessions per week as part of their warm-up for their normal sporting activity. The exercises, such as balancing on a balance board, got progressively more difficult.

Over the course of 1 year, fewer athletes in the intervention group than the usual care group sprained their ankle again - 56 athletes in the intervention group versus 89 in the usual care group re-sprained their ankle during follow-up. One repeat ankle sprain was prevented for every nine athletes who completed their balance-training programme. The balance-training programme was particularly effective in athletes whose original ankle sprain was not medically treated.

This study shows that balance training reduced the risk of recurrent ankle sprains by 35% as compared to the control group.