7 Best Ankle Warm-up Exercises to Prevent Injuries

You should include ankle warm-up exercises in your daily workout routine to prevent unnecessary injuries.Your ankles play an extremely important role for every type of workout, and an injured ankle can see you out of the gym for days or even weeks at a stretch.

The best way to avoid any form of injury or significantly reduce the chances of injury is to warm-up. If you warm-up properly and stretch the muscles before resistance training or cardio, it’s going to benefit you in more ways than one.

Coming to the ankles, they’re basically the joint upon which your entire body weight rests. You can stand up straight or walk around with weights or perform compound exercises because your ankles are able to support the movements. It’s essential you take care of them at every point.

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7 ankle warm-up exercises to avoid injuries

Ankle warm-up exercises. (Image credits: Pexels/ Andrea Piacquadio)

1) Band/Towel stretch

Sit on the floor with your legs extended. Next, take a towel or a band and wrap around your toes, and pull the towel or band towards you. Once you feel a stretch around the bottom of your feet, hold for sometime before releasing it.

2) Ankle inversion

Sit on a chair or on the floor with your legs extended. Next, turn one foot inwards, bending from the ankle. Keep moving your toes inwards until you feel a stretch. Hold the position for ten seconds before moving to the neutral position.

3) Ankle Eversion

This is the exact opposite of ankle inversion. You need to sit on a chair or on the floor with your legs extended. Once you’ve done that, move your foot outwards and point your toes upwards. Once you feel the stretch on your ankles, hold for a couple of seconds or more before relaxing.

4) Ankle rotation

This is one of the most common ankle warm-up exercises. You can sit or stand for this exercise. Extend one leg forward, pick up your foot up from the floor, and rotate from the ankle joint. Ideally, you should do ten rotations in a clockwise motion and ten in an anti-clockwise motion. Repeat for the other foot.

5) Standing stretch

Sometimes you may experience tighter calf muscles, and doing the soleus stretch can help your ankle sprain and calf muscles.

You stand facing the wall and take a few steps back. Hold the wall and place your feet one behind the other. Next, bend forward with your back foot but do not move it. Essentially, you’re moving forward from your ankle joint while keeping the rest of the body stable.

6) Standing calf stretch

Standing calf stretch. (Image credits: Pexels/ Andrea Piacquadio)

This is one of the ankle warm-up exercises which will help your calves as well.

You stand facing an object, preferably a chair or a wall. Put one foot against the object while the other remains flat on the ground. Push forward from the front aligned with the object until you feel a stretch on your ankle and calf muscles.

7) Do the alphabet

This is an interesting one. You sit on a chair or a bench, essentially some place from where you can hang your ankles. Next, proceed to write the entire alphabet, A to Z, with your foot, moving only the ankle joint. Once you’re done with this, repeat with the other foot.

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Benefits of doing ankle warm-up exercises

Ankle-warm up benefits. (Image credits: Pexels/ Barbara Olsen)

The reason you should do ankle warm-up exercises is to reduce the risk of ankle injuries. However, there are other reasons as well:

• Improvement in overall blood circulation in the lower body
• Improvement in the range of motion from the ankle joint
• Opens up the smaller muscles to help with workout sessions
• Helps with maintaining stability and balance.

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Ankle warm-up exercises ensure that the joint is protected. It’s a delicate joint, but an extremely important one. Therefore, leaving it uncared for could end devastatingly for you and your fitness journey or even resistance training. Also, once you’re done with the workout, cool down your ankles by doing the same stretches but with a much lower intensity.