Tailoredfitpt

Unstable ankles can cause knee, hip and lower back pain. But don’t let this eye-catching title scare you, because strengthening your ankles is easy. Start by doing these three exercises, three times a week with a rest day in between, and I guarantee you’ll feel a difference in under 12 weeks!

The weaker your knees, the worse your life gets. You won't be able to walk down the stairs, squat, run, jump, and even sit without discomfort and pain.
This is a protocol that strengthens the knee, the muscles above and below it, and the tendons and ligaments within it, in a safe and effective manner.
Perform this three times a week with one rest day in between, and make sure you take 90 seconds between each working set.

Your cadence is how many steps you take per minute while running.

When your cadence is low, you take fewer, longer steps. That means your foot lands out in front of your body instead of under it. Landing that way sends a bigger spike of force up through your ankle, shin, and knee on each step. Over a long run, that adds up to thousands of hard landings.

Speeding up your steps fixes a lot of this on its own. Your foot lands closer to your body. Your stride shortens. The force going through each joint decreases. Studies that measure this consistently show less load at the knee and hip when runners increase their cadence up.

Lower load per step does not guarantee you stay healthy. Training too much, too fast is still the biggest reason runners get hurt. But if you deal with knee pain or shin pain that shows up every time you run, cadence is one of the easiest things to change.

Skip the 180 number you have probably heard. That came from watching elite runners at race pace, and cadence naturally goes up as you run faster. Find your own average on an easy run, then aim for about 5 to 10 percent higher. If you run at 160, try 168 to 176.

Use a metronome app or a playlist at your target tempo. Run 2 to 3 minutes at the new rate, then go back to normal. Build from there. It will feel strange for a couple of weeks, then it will feel like nothing.

Got a running question? Drop it below and I'll answer it.

Tight hips can cause issues for your lower back, hips, and ankles. So don’t neglect your hip mobility, and start doing the following stretches today.

Foam roller hip CARs — biggest circle you can, rest of the body still. 3 to 5 per side.
Slider hip extension isometric — slide one foot back into a reverse lunge, sink down, and hold. 20 to 30 seconds per side.
Minimum 3x a week.

Preform this ankle stability and strength routine 3x a week and I guarantee you’ll feel much more confident when you run, hike, and jump!

Ankle sprains come back more often than almost any other running injury. Most people who sprain an ankle deal with it again later, and two things usually get missed. The ankle never gets its full range of motion back, and the muscles that stop the roll never learn to react in time.
These 4 exercises fix both, then build up to handling speed.
Save this one for your next warmup.

Running is not inherently "bad" for your knees. Knees usually feel crappy after running because you added too much volume too soon, and your muscles, tendons, and ligaments aren't strong enough yet to support your joints under that load. The lowest-hanging fruit is hip strength. Your hips control where your femur sits every time you take a step, and that determines what your knee has to absorb.
PMID: 30193080