Relief For Ankle Arthritis! Top 5 Exercises

if you don't want to be in pain all the time you need these five exercises in your life hey guys Dr Christy Ennis exercise number one is to be done before you even get out of bed so the first step to this is actually just circling that angle a little bit motion is lotion right we want to get that joint lubricated especially after not moving all night and then from here we're going to go into a little bit of a deeper mobilization the second part of this one is going to get that joint moving even a little bit better so you're going to take one hand on that big ankle bone to help kind of stabilize that the other hand is going to go around the heel kind of Cups and from here you're going to get some different motions in that ankle right that ankle does a lot of different motions I'm already getting some snap crackle and pop just by going side to side here you'll also go up and down and this is one if I don't do it before I get out of bed I tend to hobble around and then I trip over my poor dog and wake him up and that is not a happy scene so this will help actually walking once you get out of bed I'll make that a lot easier and you're just going to do this until you go oh hey wait a minute that feels a little bit better exercise number two is seated so you can do it on a chair or if your feet will reach the ground in your bed you can stay right in bed and do this now we're going to come right up onto those toes and then add a little circle so I am working the muscles a little bit more now but you can see my feet are getting involved a little bit here too and this one's really cracky for me so the goal would be to go in one direction for about five circles and then you're gonna use your brain a little bit come on up and do a little bit more there so now I'm getting some calf muscle involvement some foot muscle involvement and those joints are working a little bit more too for exercise number three you need a little step or even a phone book or a bench so that you can put your leg right up on it with your foot resting you're going to bring your toes up and then you're going to bring your chest forward a little bit not slumping down chest forward a little bit so that you're starting to stretch out the calf and the hamstring which also tends to get tight when we've got arthritis in there once you're in a position where you feel an nice comfortable stretch then you're going to take that foot and you're going to point it down to help stretch out some of the shin and and pump it back and forth so calf to Shin about five to ten times exercise four is going to work a little bit more of that strength so you just want to make sure that when we do this one you have something that you can keep nice and steady either a wall or a bar or a counter you're going to come up on both toes in a controlled manner but the key part of this is lowering slowly to about the count of four to five and then once those heels touch the ground you're going to lift those toes back up to help get the front of those shin muscles activated as well now it's really important that we work on the slow lowering part because that helps to lengthen out the tendon and I can tell you from my own personal experience that that tendon absolutely gets shortened when you have arthritis and I was actually offered a tendon lengthening surgery but I started adding these exercises into my repertoire and things improved greatly so it really does make a big deal here so about five to ten repetitions here our fifth exercise is working on balance mobility and strength all in one that is why I have this handy down handy dandy dowel here you can use the wall for balance if you need to but we are standing on one leg and since this is my not as good leg that's the one I'm standing on so we're going to take the opposite leg you're going to have a little Bend in your knee and I'm taking this opposite leg out forward out to the side because now my ankle has to stabilize to keep it in the middle right right behind me and then even Crossing off to the other side so the key with this is that you do really want to try to keep that ankle from doing a whole lot of rolling right we're working on that stability component and I can tell you again this is really important whoa really important to do you can ask my family how many times I have fallen and they will tell you it's probably a lot so this has helped control some of that as well and if you want more exercises on balance I will link those for you too