There are two schools of thoughts for preventing ankle sprains.
The most common method is an attempt to avoid the inevitable. Walk through your local rec building, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll find at least one player with tightly taped ankles, rigid ankle braces, and/or high-top shoes tightly tied.
All of these countermeasures are designed to immobilize the ankle. And for the most part, they’re pretty effective.
External protection does a nice job of preventing most minor ankle injuries, particularly for people with weak or previously-injured ankles.
But this comfort comes at the expense of function.
Rather than free lateral movement and leaping ability, the player is stuck with rigid ankles that prevent him/her from reaching their true athletic potential. And on the rare occasions when the foot lands in a way that would typically sprain the ankle, the stress translates up the leg to the knee, and causes more damage than ever would’ve been done on the ankle in the first place.
So although the “protection” approach is generally effective, it’s far from perfect.
Thus, there’s a second school of thought.
Rather than aiming to restrict and protect their ankles, some players choose to work from the inside out.
They focus on building strength and flexibility in the ankle, with the understanding that compromised ankle positioning is inevitable on the court. So they prepare for it rather than trying to prevent it.
By building strength in positions beyond what the ankle will ever reasonably see on the court, it’s possible to build up significant resilience without needing any external support. And at the same time, the player is able to move freely on the court.
In reality, neither of these two approaches are 100% effective.
The players that last the longest put in the mobility work and tend to avoid dangerous situations.
Disclaimer: I’m by no means a doctor or a physical trainer, and I don’t pretend to be an expert in either areas. Do your own research before you decide how to handle your health.
Beyond the world of ankle sprains, perhaps the more interesting subject is the greater thought process at play here.
In general, there are two ways to prevent adverse effects from a negative event:
- Prevent the negative event
- Prepare for it.
It’s that simple.
And the interesting thing is that, just like the ankle example, the most effective people consistently do both.
If you want to prevent emotional distress, you can put some effort into avoiding stressful situations, but it’s also imperative that you learn to control your response to these stressful events when they happen.
If you want your team to play with grit, you can try to control the game, but you also have to learn to thrive in the chaos.
You can’t prevent everything negative in your life.
At some point, you have to accept that negative events are going to happen, and learn how to deal with it.
-Brandon