How to Prevent Ankle Injuries in Soccer
I help a lot of injured soccer players return to the game without pain, and one of the most common injuries I see in my clinic is an ankle sprain.
Injuries can't be completely prevented. However, there are exercises and activities that can lower the risk of an ankle sprain.
In this post, I’m sharing some of my top tips for athletes who want to know how to prevent an ankle injury during soccer.
A quick rundown:
Incorporate agility drills into your workout routine
Never skip the warm-up
Add some balance and stability exercises into your strength days
Don’t ignore previous ankle sprains
Agility Drills to Prevent Ankle Sprains During Soccer
Most ankle sprains happen when players are running and changing direction or running on an uneven surface.
If there’s one major training component that often gets missed, but can make a big difference in preventing ankle sprains, it's agility work. This includes speed ladders, cones drills, sprint progressions, and moves that involve changing direction.
Try adding agility drills into your training routine twice per week, even just 20-30 minutes per session can make an impact on your performance and ankle health.
Some of my favorites for soccer players especially are speed ladder and cone drills that target changing direction, either going forward and backward or side to side with cutting.
The more you practice these movements, the less likely you are to sprain your ankle on the field.
Never Skip the Warm Up
I get it, nobody likes to warm up. But just hear me out, it's important for injury prevention! It doesn't have to be extensive, but doing a targeted 10-minute routine can be a real game changer for soccer players.
I recommend doing a gradual warm up, starting with basic movements, then moving up in complexity and intensity until you're working at 100%. The point of a warm up is to activate the muscles and systems in your body that you'll be using to do your sport. This includes all relevant muscles, tendons, joints, ligaments, the entire nervous system, the heart, blood vessels, and more. By doing a progressive warm up you're decreasing your risk of injury significantly.
Make sure to incorporate more active movements and dynamic stretches rather than static stretching in your routine. Static stretching right before playing doesn't correlate to improved performance like dynamic stretching typically does. I'd also suggest doing some progressive intensity sprints at various distances, as well as some multidirectional movements and exercises. But what does that mean?
Some of my favorite exercises to include are:
Side lunges
Trunk rotations
Forward lunges with reach overhead (side stretch and hip flexor stretch)
Calf raises on a step (for negative hang and eccentric control throughout the range)
Jumping in place
Skater jumps (side to side)
Try adding in some side lunges, trunk rotations, forward lunges with a reach overhead (for side stretch and hip activation), and some jumping in place. With sprints, start at 50% effort and focus on form, then move up to 65% effort, 80% effort, and finally 100% effort.
Then add some zig-zag running drills between cones, focusing on a quick crossover step and changing direction with control. Not only does this better prepare your body to play soccer in the short term, but also improves speed and performance in the long-term.
Stabilize and Support the Ankles with Balance Exercises
Balance is sort of the forgotten element when it comes to sports training and programming. Balance and stability is crucial to performance, especially in sports like soccer that involve a majority of single leg activities, such as running, kicking the soccer ball (one leg planted while the other one is swinging), and jumping. And it’s one of the areas that very few athletes purposely train in their weekly routine.
However, by making sure to incorporate some form of balance and stability exercise into your training you’ll be able to help prevent not only ankle injuries, but also reduce your risk of hamstring, hip ACL, quad, and knee injuries.
Some of my favorite balance and stability exercises that you can add into your routine are:
Single leg standing balance
Adding movement to your single leg stand (add a controlled kick forward, backward, or side to side while trying to maintain posture)
Work on standing on unstable surfaces, like a foam pad or Bosu ball
Single leg RDLs (start with body weight before adding resistance)
Single leg squats
Bulgarian squats
Double leg Bosu squats
Side lunge onto the Bosu ball
Don’t Ignore Previous Ankle Injuries
Another pro tip here, don’t ignore your old ankle injuries, such as sprains and strains. Even if the pain went away within a couple of days after an old injury, your body still likely made some adjustments along the way. Make sure that you have full mobility in the ankle on both sides and no obvious restrictions.
A lot of athletes are aware that ankle sprain are caused by a stretch of the ligaments, but what doesn’t get talked about as often is that there is often joint compression and stiffness in the ankle itself that happens as a result of the injury. If left untreated, this reduction in mobility can result in ankle stiffness that ultimately slows down your running speed, increases knee pain and compression, contributes to hip pain, and puts you at risk for other injuries.
The good news? Your local sports physical therapist can help you with this assessment. If you have a previous foot or ankle injury that you feel might be starting to impact your performance, then book an appointment and get an evaluation. One of the biggest risk factors for another ankle sprain is a previous ankle sprain - so reduce your risk of it happening again by getting everything checked out.
Stay consistent with your routine, add in agility exercises, stability/balance exercises, and always remember to warm-up prior to playing soccer. Just making a couple of these changes can reduce your risk of an ankle injury in soccer.
If you’re local to the Tri-Cities area, my clinic is in Kennewick and I’d be happy to work with you on your ankle recovery. Schedule your free discovery visit here. I provide sports-specific strengthening, agility training, recovery, rehab and more for soccer athletes.
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