Spraining your ankle is no fun, they’re really sore as we all know. And the risk is that if you’ve had one ankle sprain, you’re going to do it again within a year. If you’re a sportsperson, spraining your ankle goes with the territory.

 Researchers in the Netherlands wanted to see if they could prevent this re-spraining of the ankle. They randomly assigned 500 athletes to either a control group or an eight-week, home-based training program. The training program was aimed at giving them exercises to give them more control over their ankle movements. They had to do this so-called proprioception training three times a week for half an hour, and preferably before sport too.

 Those on the program had a one in five chance of respraining their ankles, and that compared to one in three in the control group. That was a significant difference, especially since many of the people in the program didn’t do all their exercises. For some reason, people who had not seen their doctor benefited more.

 So, that’s good news for athletes. But given that ankle sprains are painful, and can mean time lost at work, it may be that proprioceptive training is a good idea for non athletes with ankle sprains.

 Reference Title: British Medical Journal

Author: Hupperets MDW. Effect of home-based proprioceptive training on recurrences of ankle sprain: randomised controlled trial.

URL: http://www.bmj.com/

BMJ 2009;339:b2684

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