Sprained ankle - tips and tricks

[oxnop]

I’m going into Europe with the fam on weds evening for 2.5 weeks of MTB across Switzerland, Germany and France

As well as this I’m also meant to be sharing driving, as we do each year, with her indoors (whilst our 7yo and 4yo argue in the back) we have a (non auto) VW cali

On sat morning I went for a quick run. Which ended sooner than I had planned when I went over on my ankle. Cue a 50 min hobble and hop home.

I went to A&E, had an x-ray and was told it’s not fractured but it is ‘bad’ sprain

Since Saturday, I have been extremely committed to looking after said sprained ankle. So I’ve been icing c. 10 times a day and also keeping it raised. I can put my foot down, and hobble around but I Couldn’t imagine putting a shoe on and walking any distance at the moment.

This was after 1st round of icing.




Today it just looks like a fat ankle



As you can imagine I’m anxious about the fact I go on hols with the family imminently. I’m not expecting to be able to ride as I would usually, but obvs want to be a bit useful around the van / ride to shops / for food etc.

Soooo - what do you think the outlook is for me and does anyone have any tips to recover quicker or any tricks re what I can do to allow me to ride a bit (eg a recommended splint etc)

Thanks 🙏

[AI1601]

Word of warning - even soft tissue sprains can take ages to heal! I’ve only just healed from a fairly innocuous sprain back in February (mine didn’t even swell up).

Once I could walk on it without much pain I started introducing ankle exercises from Youtube the key is to build the strength in the joint and surrounding ligaments etc.