Torn ligament in ankle - How long to heal?

[Heidi84]

Treatment for grade 3 sprains should firstly include RICE (rest, ice, compress, elevate). Ice should be used for 15 minutes at a time and repeated every 3 hours throughour waking hours. Most people make the mistake of using it once or twice and thats it. You need to keep this up for at least 48 hours.

You need to start range of motion exercises firstly (like writing your name in the air with your toes) before starting gentle strengthening, like with a resistance (rehab) band.

You can find more info about sprained ankle here

[kjwilkin]

Hi there,

Firstly you need to get it properly assessed by a doctor to determine the degree of damage to your ligaments.

It is important to regularly ice your ankle while it is still swollen. Taking some pain relief is really important too. There is not much point starting physio until the pain is under control.

A tubigrip sounds like it was given to you in hospital. It may hurt but helps to reduce the swelling.

I am a sports trainer and the first thing we do is ice the joint, apply compression, elevate the limb and refer for medical treatment.

Good luck with your recovery.

[frostie15]

Ankle injury sufferers:
Back in my youth, I severely sprained my ankle playing basketball after landing on another player's foot (turned black up the side of my lower leg). Since it was playoff time, I had it taped and played two playoff games including a double overtime game knowing that I had the offseason to recover. It took three months for the swelling to go down. Over that summer, I strengthened the ankle with a homemade ankle machine that was available at the gym. The "machine" was simply a welded metal cross with a wooden foot cutout strapped to the middle of where the bars cross. The cross sat with the north/south bar in grooves on a narrow rectangular wooden box. The box was designed with very low sides to allow the bar to swivel left and right. You strapped your foot onto the foot cutout and placed a free weight on the bar that projected sideways away from your outside edge of the foot. The weight would tip your foot/ankle sideways toward the ground. The exercise was simply to use your ankle to pull the bar back to level, and then let it back down, repeating for 3 sets of 10 and gradually increasing the weight. By the end of the summer my ankle was stronger than pre-injury and I never have had another problem with it. Depending on the ankle injury, the exercise I described may or may not work the problem area. But I mention it because I had great success with this approach to ankle strengthening and to emphasize that it is very important to find some sort of resistance training to isolate this difficult area.
Rob N.

Hey rob, you think you could send me a picture of this machine to cjfrost97@gmail.com (as its hard to grasp what it looks like)

[marie24]

ive had problems with my ankle for nearly 10 years and only just found out that 2 ligaments on outside of ankle are torn and the 1 on the inside of ankle is streched and they tryed physio and giving me arches for my shoes and none have worked so theres nothing else they can do (so they say) yet i lie in bed at night in pain i can be stood still and my ankle pops out at least 3-4 times a month its really anyoying.

[shreyaa]

ok i had had the same when i was in 8th grade in both my legs. now im going to go to 10th grade and it didnt heal still