Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
A Beginners Guide to Step by Step Ankle Rehab
Episode 360: Have you got a bad ankle? Never really done much about it? JT & Joey take you through the 5 key steps to restoring the spring to your step. Now most of time as BJJ folks we get away with having crappy ankles by just pulling guard or avoiding stand up battles but at some point in time you will have to hop and jump during rolling. If you are coming off the couch with a freshly sprained ankle you need to get that bad boy checked by a health professional to make sure your ligaments are all intact before you start to do anything to make sure you are not doing more harm than good. Follow this Guide to gradually build yourself back up - be patient. Do go rushing back to Jiu-Jitsu until you have passed these 5 check points! Let us know your bad ankle stories in the comments.
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A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. I'm JT the guy in the hat and that's Joey the guy with the hair, of course.
Speaker 1:Fix your broken ankles for BJJ. So there's a lot of people out there not tapping the foot locks. You know, maybe they rolled their ankle playing footy or soccer when they were younger something like that Bit of a stand-up exchange common to roll an ankle there, stiff ankles. It can be a problem and we're going to talk today about how you can approach restoring your ankle function and getting back on the mat when you have rolled your ankle, busted your ankle. Now. This chat is under the proviso, the caveat, that your ligaments are intact. If you have completely ruptured your ligaments, do not do these things. Go see a physio, go get a scan. Now. It's hard to know, because sometimes when you roll your ankle, it just blows up, gets fat and you can get bruising. And you. It's hard to know, because sometimes when you roll your ankle, it just blows up, gets fat and you can get bruising and you're like I don't know what's going on there. Yeah, I mean, you may not have even ruptured it, but it might be severely torn. Yeah, right, in which case, yeah, go see a professional. Yes, please get that assessed. And we always advise you to find out what's going on. Yeah, to your point, you sometimes don't know, right? No, I mean you are. You generally don't know, and so it's like go and see a professional that can give you an assessment and they'll usually be able to do some manual tests. You don't have to have a scan and they go. No, no, it feels like a tear, but shit's intact. Yeah, as long as you've got the structural integrity integrity there you can start to go to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so where can you start? When you have rolled your ankle and maybe it's been a couple of weeks and you're like oh, I can walk on it, it's a bit sore. You're like how do I get back to jujitsu? This is the checkpoint roadmap for how you get back on the mats. So the first thing you need to do is restore range of motion. So I really I busted my ankle really bad back in 2014. I got footlocked terribly. I didn't want to tap because it was worlds and ended up having to tap. But now my ankle was completely wrecked and the first thing I did because my ankle was huge and fat was actually get in the pool. So there was a pool at the hotel. I could barely walk, but to take the weight out, the gravity out, and make it a bit easier for myself to kind of limp around, I got in the pool every day just trying to move my ankle to improve the circulation. So the advice very regularly is ice it, elevate it, rest it. But recent research has showed that this is not as helpful as it seems and even though we do like to put the ice on there because it has the numbing effects and it feels good, this has actually been shown to slow recovery and even though elevating your ankle can be good to help that cankle decrease, not moving your ankle can also slow it down.
Speaker 1:Have you ever had a bad ankle, joe? Have, yeah, fucked it up Big time playing football. Have you ever had a bad ankle, joe? Have, yeah, fucked it up big time playing football? Um, yeah, movement is the main thing. Huh, like you got, you got to move it a lot. It's going to be sore. Yeah, I think that ice and elevation can be good to help deal with some of the soreness initially, you know. So, yeah, so, even if you're like, say, you're working it and you're moving it a bunch during the day and like pushing it a bit, you're in the gym doing stuff, yeah, then when you're watching tv at night it can be nice to elevate and put some ice gonna fucking take the pain away and then you can go to sleep. But the main thing is that you're moving it.
Speaker 1:Heat pack oh see, this is. This seems counterintuitive, right. I do like a bit of heat pack goes a long way. It does improve the circulation. So here's what you've got to think. It's like when you see that swelling in the ankle. It's almost like a traffic jam, right, and you've got all these fluids in there and the body's trying to do what it can to heal the area. But the body's really bad at returning like exiting the traffic out of there, which is like getting the waste products out the lymphatic system. It's just slow. So putting the heat actually helps. You know, get the people in there, get the workers stop, start fucking get this shit out of there, and that's going to help their area heal by speeding up circulation to the area and getting the junk out. Yeah, and I reckon, walking, like, as soon as you can walk, walk on it and and try to try to restore your regular gate. Like, try not to limp on it and you're going to limp on it, right, of course, but try not to always. And that's going to limp on it. And you're going to limp on it, right, of course, but try not to always. And that's going to be pushing it and helping to get the waste product out.
Speaker 1:I've had that situation a couple of times recently where I've come to training with some water but I haven't had any electrolytes and I've finished training and I've had to go to a convenience shop and buy myself some kind of sports drink. Usually, a gatorade cost me like seven, it's small and it really doesn't contain that much of the good stuff that I'm looking for, which are the electrolytes. So Sodi, on the other hand, is my partner when it comes to hydration and I'd simply just run out of it and it sucks because I got to go buy expensive stuff that doesn't do anywhere near as good a job. I'm super stoked that we've been restocked with the Sodi and now I can be properly hydrated when I train jiu-jitsu. This has always been an underexplored aspect of my training and I'm so stoked that we now have these guys in place to support us and also the listeners of the show.
Speaker 1:So if you want to be hydrated on the mats so that you can perform at your best and have the best mental clarity while training, get yourself some Sodi. Go to sodicomau that's S-O-D-I-Icomau. Get yourself some delicious hydration salts and use the code BULLETPROOF15 for 15% off. Go to sodicomau. Get yourself hydrated. Yeah, some regular range of motion, like.
Speaker 1:Until you've got your normal range of motion back, it's hard to do things. But another thing you can do which will help regain your confidence and this seems counterintuitive right when you've got a bad ankle, you're like oh, I want to stay off that. No, I don't want to put weight there. But actually what you need to do is restore your proprioception, your balance, your ability to feel what's going on, because some people, uh, when they hurt their ankle, they either have acute pain or sometimes they get numbness, like toes are a bit numb or circulation's not there and they're struggling there. It's really important for you to get the feel back of what the hell is going on with your ankle.
Speaker 1:So two things that I found helped me one was rolling out the arch of my foot and rolling out my calves on a spiky roller, like getting massage, because that helped with the circulation. And the second one was balancing on my foot, on my bad foot, and so when would I do this? I would do this when I was brushing my teeth, or I do this when I was just like waiting for a coffee, or just little 30 second grabs where I could just stand on that foot and try to just try to get the vibe back on, like where are my limits? Because the worst thing is, if you don't spend time doing this, you are much more likely to re-injure, and that can happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the um, I guess the proprioception thing to to sort of simplify for folks when you cop an injury like that, that joint or that limb, like your foot, becomes a bit dumb, yes, and so like there's an intelligence that's inherent and it's in your coordination and your strength and it's, you know, it's all those things combined. When you cop an injury, you just it becomes a bit dumber. I switch off, yeah, and say like, oh shit, like I can't balance on that leg anymore. What the fuck's going on. That's kind of an example of it, and so, yeah, it's kind of like um, studying a little bit right in a way, like to make it to get it smarter again. Yeah, to get it smarter again. Yeah, to get it smarter again, get it smarter again, make it more smarter, most smarterest. You get the fucking point right. So, yeah, balance work, single leg stuff, a good drill that I used to say with my knee was doing a bunch of balance drills and then, once they felt fine, was then doing it with my eyes closed, oh, which just added a whole nother layer to it, and shutting the eyes is such a much more challenging way to do it and get out of the shoes.
Speaker 1:Folks, here's the thing. Like, a lot of people are like oh, I'm in the boot. You know, like the moon boot, what have you? You know like one of the first things that doctors like to do. I don't know if they're getting kickbacks for supplying these huge things, but they're like, yeah, go in this moon boot, which has a very unnatural rolling effect that you just don't use when you normally walk, and it's really, in my opinion, it's actually the worst way to go instead of like oh yeah, I'm going to go to anaconda ankle braces and just wrap it up like this For you to get that proprioception, for you to get the circulation, for you to get the proprioception back, you actually have to spend time with your bare foot on the ground just getting used to it, because that is the foundation for your movement.
Speaker 1:And if you wrap yourself up in all this bullshit, you're actually delaying your ability to get back to the mats. Yeah, yeah, you're inhibiting your ability to move Naturally. Now, once you do have your balance back and you've got a bit of stability there, you're like oh, I'm getting this. This is cool. You need to add light load. So if you are-stretch, no step, just start there. How would you start that, joe? Yeah, calf raise, I think, are a great point. Um, you actually did a video on this a little while ago, didn't you? With the on instagram.
Speaker 1:I think it was like strengthen your ankles. Yeah, I it did. Yeah, and yeah, there's like kind of two simple ways. You can sort of scale the calf raise, but you just work off flat ground so you can just do two legs. It's like a really easy way to build a bunch of reps. Then you can go to a step where you're now letting the heels drop below the height of the front of the forefoot and so you're getting like double, double range of motion, two legs, and then I'd go back to the floor on a single leg and then go back to the step on a single leg. Ah, very nice. Yeah, I mean when you're doing single leg calf raise like they're really fucking hard, it's way harder than you think. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:I, I think they're a great all-rounder for um, for ankle injuries, but also for knee, yes, um, yeah. And they the high percentage same thing like you're saying, like when you're waiting for your coffee or whatever, I will sometimes just do like little mini, like calf pumps. Yeah, you know, because I find it like if I'm feeling my ankle, like I'm feeling my right ankle now from training on monday, I guess someone footlocked me, like, tried to, and I just, you know whatever got out of it, but I'm like, oh, it's a bit sore, I don remember what happened, but so a couple of little calf raise pumps when it comes to mind will usually make it feel better. Yeah, definitely Get the blood in there.
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Speaker 1:Once you have incorporated this and this is something you don't have to do it every day, but factoring it in regularly is going to speed up your ability to get back to jiu-jitsu. And the thing is, for most of you out there, you're like I can walk. If I can walk, I can roll right, incorrect, my friends, Let me explain why. There's a couple more steps we need to go here. Once you've kind of mastered the light load and you're like all right, I'm ready for the next step Strength we got to add some weight there. So one of the movements I really like is to either holding a kettlebell or a dumbbell whatever on the side of the injured leg, just holding it by your side and doing a weighted calf raise and and doing it on a step is great, but adding that little bit of extra load is awesome and I like three sets of as much as you can handle at that load, like completely pump your calf out. That's that's my kind of thing for the strength component.
Speaker 1:But then there's another element, there's another layer on that. Is there any more dynamic? This is hopping, this is jumping, this is lateral. See, at the moment we've just kind of worked on the kind of normal forward-back linear motion. But actually, in terms of stability, you've got to look at the side to side, and that's typically where people are vulnerable. Yeah, and it's also like it's one thing to be strong, but strong is usually slow. Yes, and you're not absorbing force, yeah, whereas we go to the hopping like plyometric stuff, and now your body's having to absorb force in a short space of time, and this is like this is moving more towards the athleticism that's actually kind of required for jujitsu.
Speaker 1:It's not essential, it's plenty of. There's plenty of people that are unathletic, that are right, but but you know, when you're standing up or when you're scrambling and stepping and like trying to like, there's a lot going on there and so we want to be able to try and replicate it in the gym somehow. So I mean, often people be like like, oh, I don't hop in jiu-jitsu. Well, if someone's on a single leg and you're defending, you are hopping. No question someone's trying to sweep you and you just got to stabilize and you're hopping to the side.
Speaker 1:If you've got a squeaky wheel, if you've got an ankle which is injured and you're trying to get it back to you know, rolling ability, um, your ability to take dynamic loads really important. So if you can't control your, you've got to be able to take loads, just huge loads, right in the back. No, I think the most important thing, the most important thing, is it more than just knowing that you can walk up and downstairs and do these basic life things. Hopping side to side is a is a big deal and even getting able-bodied people, you're like, oh, I just want you to hop side to side. People fucking stack. Yeah, they just eat shit.
Speaker 1:Like you, just like people don't spend enough time doing it and as a result, it's like oh, it's my bad ankle, I tweak my ankle again because I didn't put time into working on the dynamic element of strengthening the ankle. Yeah, on that, on that point of hopping, if you, if you are doing it in this rehab sort of context, don't do it on the mats, because the mats are unstable, it's like trying to hop around on a pillow. Do it on a hard ground where you've got good contact, hard surface barefoot, and really that's the step you need to go to before rolling. I know we like to skip all that, but like, yeah, I did a little bit of what the physios say I did the calf raises, I'm back. Yeah, I'm back, let's just roll. But definitely factor in these steps, even if it's only a couple of more weeks before you're back to rolling, because it means you're less likely to re-injure, which is it's a, it's a heart attack.
Speaker 1:When you think you've made progress and you get injured again, you're like, fuck, I'm back again. I reckon you can do it. You can kind of do it parallel as well, right To a point where you might be like okay, the strength is good, stability is good, like range of motion, et cetera. Um, I'm back at jujitsu, but I'm not doing any off your back, or you're just drilling or whatever while being in the gym working on the dynamic stuff, the hopping and whatnot. And then when you're like cool, I'm good, now you go back to full-scale training. There it is folks, fix up those broken ankles for BJJ. Now, if you like this stuff and you want more people to see it like, subscribe, give us a five-star rating. We appreciate you all. Thanks, guys.
