How Can a Massage Therapist Help My Outer Ankle Sprain?

More than 25,000 people sprain their ankles daily in the United States. The most common sprain is on the outer side of the ankle, but it can also occur on the inner side. In this blog, we will answer the question, “How can a massage therapist help my outer ankle sprain?”

But first, what are ligaments, and how are they related to an ankle sprain? Ligaments hold bones together and are the culprits in ankle sprains. There are over 100 ligaments in each foot, but the ones that give us the most trouble are three at the outer ankle. The most troublesome ligament is the one toward the front in blue (Anterior Talofibular Ligament), the one on the side in purple (Calcaneofibular Ligament), and the one at the back in green (Posterior Talofibular Ligament).

 

Swelling Helps Protect Your Sprained Ankle

                               

When you sprain a ligament, there are usually little microtears where the ligament attaches to the ankle bones. When a ligament gets damaged, the brain signals the joint to swell, and the swelling helps protect your sprained ankle so that you don’t do something that will cause further damage. It causes pain, limits the ankle joint’s mobility, and gives you the message to rest. You can injure one, two, or all three ligaments at once. If the sprain is very mild, there might not be any visible swelling at all, except once in a while when you overdo it.

 

What to Do

Stop, rest, and elevate your legs. You can elevate your legs by putting them up on a wall, a chair, or a couch while you lie flat and rest there for a while. This helps the circulation to your foot. The most important thing to do for your ankle is to move it without any weight on it until you can walk without pain. This prevents bad scar tissue from forming and encourages good scar tissue. Good scar tissue means that the fibers are healing properly, and bad scar tissue means that the tissue is healing in multiple directions and randomly formed. The ligaments are, therefore, vulnerable to re-spraining.

If the pain is constant for more than a week or so, seek out treatment. Skilled treatment ensures that the damaged fibers heal well, which means the fibers are in the proper alignment. If the ligaments heal with adhesive scar tissue, the pain will often recur for years to come. Having a few weeks of treatment is well worth the investment. The sooner you get the treatment, the less treatment you will need.

 

Assessing the Sprain

The task for the therapist is to figure out which ligaments are sprained and then apply the appropriate treatment to break up the adhesive scar tissue and allow you to heal. The therapist does this by doing specific testing procedures. For each ligament, there is a specific assessment test. Once the therapist has assessed which ligament or ligaments are injured, touching each one with mild pressure identifies which part of each ligament is damaged.

 

Exercises To Do Immediately

Move the foot in multiple directions without pain. Hold your foot in the air and move it side to side, and forward and back. Then, try doing a series of circles in both directions. Do this as frequently as possible throughout the day, as long as you can do it without pain or discomfort. This prevents the formation of adhesive scar tissue and allows your ligaments to heal properly.

 

Exercises After There’s No Pain

When you have no pain, you must strengthen the muscles in the four quadrants of the lower leg and your ankle ligaments. You have muscles in the front of your lower leg, usually called the shin muscles. Then you have the calf muscles in the back. These are easy for you to identify. But then you have other muscles that move your foot from side to side. The ones on the outside are easy to identify, but the ones that move your foot inward are underneath your shinbone, so you can’t see them. You want to be sure to exercise all of them to return stability to your lower leg, foot, and ankle.

 

The heel raises exercise is a good place to start. There is a whole series of exercises for the ankle here.  You can also access them from the menu at the top of the page by clicking Private Practice and Exercise Rehabilitation Videos. Each exercise is categorized by the body area and titled with the name of the body structure. For example, these heel raise exercises are categorized under Foot and Ankle and titled, Outer and Inner Sprained Ankle.

 

 

 

---

If you are experiencing traveling or referred pain and live in the Boston area, schedule a complimentary 10-15 phone consultation.

Call for a Free 10-15 minute Phone Consultation →

---

Ben E. Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and was the founder and President of the Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He is the author of dozens of articles on working with injuries and chronic pain as well as the widely used books in the field, Are You Tense?, Exercise Without Injury and Listen To Your Pain: The Active Person’s Guide to Understanding, Identifying and Treating Pain and Injury. Dr. Benjamin has been in private practice for over 50 years and teaches therapists throughout the country.