Preventing ankle sprains: To brace or not to brace?

Here’s a question that we hear quite a bit-

Q: Do you recommend the use of ankle braces for all basketball players?

A: In general, we don’t advocate the use of ankle braces in healthy players. While there are times they might be warranted, there are a number of reasons to avoid using them.

As basketball shoes have evolved from the Converse All-Star days, they have become rigid, heavily cushioned, and bulky. All of these things may have improved comfort and supportiveness, but have only moved the foot farther from the ground, minimizing ground-foot interactions. As a result, these modern basketball shoes remove the foot and therefore the body from much of the sensory feedback that it normally gets from its interaction with the ground. In our opinion, this “interference” with normal proprioception is a huge part of why ankle sprains are such a problem.

Unfortunately, time and tradition have resulted in conventional wisdom that if you don’t wear high tops, you’re going to sprain your ankle. Lately it has been taken a step further, with increased use of the aforementioned ankle braces to try to stabilize this compromised structure. In many cases, such a measure may actually make a bad situation worse.

The ankle joint sits atop the foot, which is comprised of 26 bones and is beautifully designed to allow for both flexible shock absorption and stable propulsion. It has a remarkable ability to adapt to the surfaces it strikes, and acts as a both a sensory and mechanical switch that turns on the musculature in the rest of the body. If we turn it off by wrapping it up in a “protective” cocoon, we not only don’t reduce the likelihood of injury, we actually increase the likelihood that something else will take a beating, like the knee or the back. In fact, an awkward landing that might normally be able to be absorbed by motion at the foot may result in injury to one of the structures farther up the chain, such as the knee.

As you can see, having a mobile, switched-on foot is absolutely critical for preventing not only ankle injuries, but even more devastating injuries farther up the chain. Rather than focusing on preventing motion at the ankle joint using high-tops and ankle braces, we should be making sure that the ankle and foot below have enough motion and are activated before playing.

 
SHARE IT