Everything is connected...
In my previous post I shared with you what I did to strengthen my core and feet in order to reduce my risk of knee injuries. In this post, I will focus on the exercises I did to stabilize my ankles and hips. With stronger feet and a stronger core, exercises that were difficult or impossible had become a lot easier to do.Ankle stability
Three-way leg raises with a resistance band
Tie the elastic band tight enough around your legs or ankles to feel some resistance when raising your leg straight forward, to the side and behind you.
First do the exercise with my hand on a wall or chair for balance, with your arms open for balance.
The key is to not let your foot or knee wobble, to keep your toes spread wide and my whole foot in contact with the ground.
Around-the-clock toe taps
This favorite exercise of mine is one commonly used by triple jumpers to prepare their ankles for the sport. Triple jumping is one of the most dangerous sport for the ankles and knees, so if this low-impact exercise can help these athletes protect themselves from injury, it should also be good for runners.
Find your balance on one foot, then bend the knee of your standing leg slightly, pushing your hips back as if you were about to sit on a chair behind you
Keeping your other leg straight, tap your foot right in front of you, lift it and then tap as many of the hours of the clock around you.
Focus on keeping your foot and knee aligned, pointing in the same direction, and your ankle stable.
Hip Stability & Glute Strength
I would strengthen my glutes and challenge my balance further I added a balance ball to my plank and bridge exercises, and started working my hip abductors and rotators more by adding an elastic band around my thighs or ankle weights for leg raises, side planks, etc.
On the Swiss ball I would do:
Bridges
1-leg bridges
1-leg bridge with knee hug
Bridges with a ball (soccer or pilates) between the legs
Planks with my feet stacked on top of the ball
Planks with the elbows on the ball
With an elastic band or ankle weights I would do:
Hip extensions with knee extension (standing on hands and knees)
Hip extensions with knee bent (standing on hands and knees)
Side planks on the elbow with leg raises
Side planks on the elbow with small leg circles
Clamshells
In a more sport-specific way, I would do all my running drills with an extra focus on hip stability and alignment. The goal is to not let your hips drop side to side when moving from one foot to the other.
Princeton University's Athletic Medicine published a great program that would work for most people except maybe people whose internal hip r:
http://www.princeton.edu/uhs/pdfs/PelStabHip-StrenPro.pdf
What about the knees?!
In the last blog post of this injury prevention trilogy, I will discuss the more advanced exercises I did that directly involved my knee joints.
In my "prehab" journey to ready myself to start running, I did not start doing leg strengthening exercises until after a couple of months of balance, joint stability, and core strength training. I think it really helped me prevent injuries linked to doing leg strengthening exercises with bad form. Doing exercises like squats, 1-leg squats, lunges, etc. with bad balance and wobbly knees can do more damage than good...