The ankle is held together by many ligaments. While the ankle was designed very well for the dorsiflexion- plantarflexion movements of straight forward walking and running, the lateral structures supporting the ankle are weaker and are at risk during side to side movement. The most commonly sprained ligaments in the ankle are the anterior talofibular ligament, the ATFL, and the calcaneofibular ligament, the CFL. These ligaments can be injured during extreme inversion, or outward rolling, of the ankle.

Your ankle also has muscles and tendons that move the foot and ankle, and stabilize the arch in addition to many other functions. These muscles and tendons can be strengthened to improve the stability of your ankle and prevent future injury to the structures. Applying controlled, moderate forces through the ligaments and other collagen structures in the ankle help to improve the strength and flexibility of these tissues.

Easy Ankle Exercises

First, put a sticky note in the corner of your bathroom mirror to remind yourself to do the exercises. A little visual never hurt. In the two minutes that you are brushing your teeth, try this:

#1. Balance on one foot for a minute. Switch to the other foot. Feel your fibularis muscles, the muscles along the outside of your leg from your ankle to your knee, turn on. Try to keep your balance for the full minute on each side, but use a fingertip on the counter to keep from falling. You can build up to a full minute starting with whatever you can hold and going up from there. While doing this exercise, try not to let your hips sag; you should see the line of your hips straight in your mirror. If it is too difficult to brush at the same time, add that in later.

#2. Walk on your toes. Try pacing the bathroom or walk down the hall on your toes staying tall. There is a reason dancers have strong ankles! You can also try doing calf raises at the counter to build strength in your calves before you try walking. While doing this exercise, think about coming up onto your toes with your weight centered over your 2nd toe. Try to keep your ankles straight, do not allow too much rolling in either direction. (This is a also good for ankle strength, but focus here on straight and tall.) For ideal alignment and efficiency during walking, each time you take a step you should roll over and push off your 2nd toe in a straight line.

#3. Walk on the sides of your feet. Work on curling your toes to lift your arch and really walking on the outsides of your feet. This position may feel like you are about to roll your ankle so be careful if your ankles begin to hurt or if you do not feel like you have complete control of your balance. This exercise will help the flexibility and strength of your lateral ligaments and muscle tendons in your ankle. Your ankles may become sore or your arch may become cramped. This is ok, it is a sign that you are engaging muscles that may not have been challenged in a while. Just proceed slowly and with caution.

Feel free to do any combination of these exercises as your ankle strength improves. You can do one minute single leg stands on your toes! Or, try doing calf raises with your ankles turned slightly out or in. Key things to focus on are balance, strength, and flexibility.

Ever think that you don’t have time for exercise when you get home? Putting in an hour at the gym after putting in a 10 hour day at the office just doesn’t seem possible anymore, and the laundry and dishes you left in the kitchen sink are still sitting there. Before you get discouraged, let’s problem solve and find a way to work in these few exercises into your office life.
You will be doing your body a favor and preventing repetitive stress injuries. All you need to do is take a few minutes to revitalize and recharge yourself, and attack exercise while you sit at your desk!

Top 12 Desk Exercises

From the image above, the shaded regions represent the muscles that are being targeted.

#1 Lean back and Stretch your wrists and shoulders. Interlock your fingers with your palms facing away from you to stretch your wrist flexors and shoulder protractors. If you have shoulder problems you may not want to bring the arms above shoulder height.

#2 Reach arms up overhead. You can do this sitting or standing and you can go right into #3.

#3 Side Bend. You can do this stretch sitting or in standing for a deeper stretch. With arms overhead, grasp elbows and lean to one open up one side, then the other.

#4 skip. It is the same as #2.

#5 Shoulder Shrugs. Just sitting at your desk, inhale and shrug your shoulders to your ears, hold, then exhale and release your tension and relax your shoulders down to neutral. Rest your arms down at your sides. If you can throw in a good squeeze between the shoulder blades, all the better!

#6 Behind the Back Shoulder Stretch. While sitting in your desk chair, lean forward slightly and reach your arms behind your back. Clasp you hands together and tilt your head to one side, then the other to stretch your upper traps.

#7 & #8 Wrist Stretches. Similar to #2. Place your palms together and press through your fingers as your bring your palms lower in front of your chest. Pivot your finger tips downward so that they are pointing towards the ground. This stretches your finger flexors which are constantly working to type and write.

#9 Sitting Swimmer Stretch. Reach one arm up and punch the sky, while reaching the opposite arm down and punch the floor. Switch, repeat. This works on shoulder strength and scapular elevation and depression.

#10 Seated Twist. Cross one leg over the other and sit up straight. Twist slowly to the opposite side and stretch your postural extensor muscles. Your back may crack, but do not look for this to occur. Inhale with twist, exhale as you lean into it and appreciate the stretch.

#11 Seated Pec Stretch. While seated, place both your hands on your hips with your thumbs facing forward. Push your elbows back and allow your chest to open. Your lower back may extend a little, but focus on opening your chest to counter all the forward reaching and typing activity.

#12 Shake out your Hands. Revitalize your hands by shaking them out and allowing new circulation to reach your fingertips. This exercise relieves the compression on your forearms and wrists and relaxes the hands. You can make fists by clenching and unclenching your fingers. Make small air circles with your wrists.

Other Desk Exercises and Activities to Try

• Do an ergonomic assessment of your workspace
• Stand up and sit down with no hands.
• Knee extensions under your desk. Sit up tall to engage your abs and quads. Kick your leg out parallel to the floor and hold for 5 seconds. Point and flex your toes and ankles. Relax and repeat.
• Get rid of your desk chair and substitute an exercise ball.
• Sit on the edge of your chair (if it has wheels, wedge the chair against the desk or wall to make sure it does not roll). Put your feet together, flat on the floor. Lean over, chest to knees, letting your arms dangle loosely to the floor. Release your neck.
  Now bring your hands behind your legs, right hand grasping left wrist, forearm (or elbow if you can reach that far), left hand grasping the right. Feel the stretch in your back, shoulders and neck. Hold. Release. Repeat.
• Substitute walks for emailing your coworkers.
• Walk around or stand up while on the phone.
• Don’t eat at your desk

Contrary to the common opinion and the impression that is given by many infomercials and ads about weight training workouts, many common exercises are not primarily designed to lose weight. Find out about the most common misconceptions in this article.

In general, weight lifting does not necessarily burn a lot of fat. Heart rate and overall fat burning capacity is relatively low, because many weight lifting workout routines address only a group of muscles at a time. Therefore, the same time spent in an exercise that engages more muscles at the same time will burn a lot more fat and energy.

However, there are exceptions to this generalization. You actually can get both done at the same time if you follow the guidelines in this related article about how to burn fat by building muscle.

Weight lifting workouts really strengthen specific muscle groups and build muscle. This can actually lead to an increase in weight, particularly if it is not accompanied by fat burning exercises and targeted nutrition adjustments.

A balanced “weight lifting workout” should consist of a cycle through different actual weight lifting exercises that are changed up with fat burning exercises like jogging or bicycle. It is also important to give the different muscle groups time to build and “digest” the strengthening exercises for certain time intervals before addressing them again with intensity.

It is also important to consider your overall workout goals and the time that you have available to put into the routines. Someone who wants to develop an overall fitness from scratch with a 3-day per week time availability will end up with a significantly different workout plan than a person who is in good shape and wants to build more strength in 5 workouts per week.

Most people who want to learn how to lose weight fast and gain better overall conditioning and fitness will get best results with a fitness workout routine that matches about 2 parts of fat burning exercises with one part of muscle and strength building.

This means if you are looking at a 3 day regiment, you can do two days of fat burning and conditioning, and one day of weight lifting. If you have the time to work out on five days per week, you can do three days of fat burning and conditioning, and two days of weight lifting and strength building. For best results switch between fat burning and weight lifting days.