How to Exercise With an Ankle Injury

If you sprained your ankle or rolled it, you will notice that exercising is suddenly very 
difficult. Even without realizing it, you spent a lot of time standing, walking, and twisting 
your feet and ankles, all of which is now hard to do. Luckily, this doesn’t mean you can’t 
exercise, but that you need to re-think what you do. Here are some helpful tips for 
exercising after you get an ankle injury.

Weight Training

Following an injury to the ankle, you typically want to simply focus your exercises on 
another part of the body. This often means doing more upper body workouts, such as 
weight training. It is a good time to work on your weight training, especially if you 
typically only do cardio. Combining both is best when you want to have a well balanced 
workout routine. You can easily sit and do many weight exercises, as well as sitting on 
the edge of your bed if you prefer. 

Choose Cardio That is Non-Weight Bearing

You may not want to skip cardio completely, or you can gain weight and it will be harder 
to get back to exercising when your ankle begins to heal. There are some cardio 
workouts that don’t require you to bear any weight on your ankle, so these are good to 
try out.

The first is swimming, which puts no pressure on your ankle at all. Your body is 
supported by the water, even if you are in the shallow end with your feet touching the 
ground. The water can be soothing, while you are also able to get in an excellent 
workout. Try swimming laps or doing some water aerobics.

You can also use an exercise bike, which does put your feet on the petals, but they 
don’t move, bend, or twist, so it is usually okay with a sprained ankle. You just want to 
start slow and wrap your ankle first to give it a little more support.

Work on Strengthening Your Core

You can also strengthen your core when you have an ankle injury. A lot of floor 
exercises like Pilates and just ordinary crunches will work on building those ab muscles 
and strengthen your core to help avoid back injuries in the future. Modify some moves 
that require planting your feet on the ground or just skip them and do moves that don’t 
involve your legs at all.
