What kind of exercises can I do to strengthen my ankle?

Question

I've been running for about 5 years now and almost every year I get problems on the medial side of my shins. If I keep running, eventually the soft tissue even swells up enough to be palpable and painful.

I know I have very poor ankle stability, when I try ice skating it's so bad that the medial side of my shoes even touches the ice. I also have quite some pronation, all the way through my roll off, that get's worse when I start running faster. Together my weak ankles and some overweight, this is resulting in some recurring shin problems.

_{Here's some nice images from under my feet when walking}

I started running again 2 months ago and focused on building it up slowly and not running too much (max 3 x 5km per week). I hoped this would prevent it from recurring and built up sufficient strength, but this morning I started feeling one of my shins again.

So now I'm looking for exercises I can do (at home) to strengthen my ankles!

It's also fine if its whole leg exercises, but my main focus is on increasing my ankle strength.

Answer 1

In my personal experience, simple walking will do a lot to strengthen the ankles. I had Achilles tendinitis in January in both ankles due to trying to run without having conditioned myself properly. I took a couple weeks off of all unnecessary walking or being on my feet, then started walking every day for the next 6 weeks. I started running again at the beginning of March using the Couch to 10K app on my iPhone. It steps you slowly into running with intervals of running and walking.

Active.com has a nice list of ankle-strengthening exercises to prevent ankle injuries, shin splints (which it sounds like you have), and Achilles tendinitis (which I had in January). These exercises include...

Balance exercises:

• Balance on one leg for 30 seconds, building to a minute. (Bodybuilding.com suggests building on this exercise with weights or on an unstable surface like foam) (WikiHow suggests using a Balancing Board)
• Play a game of catch with a friend while balancing on one leg.
• Do one leg squats (squat about halfway down while balancing on one leg).

Resistance Band exercises:

• Inversion (rotating the ankle inward)
• Eversion (rotating the ankle outward)
• Dorsiflexion (lifting your toes toward your head)
• Plantar flexion (pushing your toes away from your body)

(For a simpler description of inversion and eversion, see WikiHow's notes on "Ankle Turns")

Body-weight exercises:

• Scissor hops (standing in a "lunge" position, jump and switch your forward foot with your back foot)
• Squat jumps (jumping from a quarter-squat position)
• Bounding (their description is rather unclear, but you should sort of "hop" forward like you're running on your toes, but very slowly, around 50% of running speed)

Bodybuilding.com also suggests swinging dumbbell calf raises, where you do a single leg calf raise while swinging a dumbbell around randomly.