I have suffered dozens of ankle sprains, with two being fully involved shreddings of multiple tendons and ligaments. This past Monday morning I sprained my ankle walking down the stairs. The biggest thing to take away from this article is a realization that connective tissue injuries are forever. Once you have popped an ankle it will be more likely to pop again in the future. That does not mean that the ankle injury will be unmanageable.

If you have had an ankle injury in the past and the ankle feels fine now, but you are engaging in combat sports, you may want to invest in a BAPS Board to make sure you develop the ankle. It is also good for the final stages of your rehab when you seriously hurt it again.

Through the links at the bottom of the page you can find all the information you need about taking care of your messed up ankle. I will offer tips for managing that crappy ankle in your combat training and competition. These were worked out by trial and error and with the help of three therapists and two doctors.

1. Always warm up your ankles before training or fighting. It s amazing how much this is neglected.

2. When there is no pain or swelling do solo training without a sleeve or brace.

3. Use Muay Thai ankle sleeves whenever you are going to be pushing footwork for performance in training, or whenever you are doing sparring that offers the possibility of stepping on a partner’s foot, which is how ankle injuries usually happen with boxers. Always sleeve both ankles.

4. If the injury is swollen or painful, or if it has chronically reoccurred, or if you are on grass or other uneven surfaces, sleeve the ankles and use lace up braces over top the sleeve.

1. With shoes that offer no ankle support they should be as low and light as possible. The worst shoes to wear are low boots that provide potential torque and no support. Overall, be leery of any boots that are massive on the bottom and/or have low hard uppers.

2. In conditions where sprains become likely, as in sparring or competition, the ankle sleeves can be worn inside of soft low shoes. The ankle sleeve helps warm up the joint and is there to provide compression when the joint is injured. It is not a preventative.

3. For fighting on indoor surfaces boxing boots offer the best ankle support. Your want a soft stiff upper and a light lower portion.

4. For sparring or fighting on outside surfaces military jump boots are the best. I did all of my fighting in these during my severe sprains, and even had one pair soled with felt so I could wear them as mat shoes.

Hell, Ken Norton did it, and he broke Ali’s jaw.

While recovering from an ankle injury, practice training in slow motion, keeping the injured foot flat. You will not move as quickly or nimbly, but you can train and fight flat-footed. In this way, if you injure your ankle during a fight and would like to continue, and also do not want to shred the thing, you can dial back down to flatfooted mobility. Most importantly, if you learn to fight flatfooted—at least with that foot—while it will not offer ideal or maximum results, it will enable you to be effective if you are called upon to fight with a preexisting ankle injury. I have won fights against good men with an ankle injury, and have continued fighting without exasperating the injury, in this fashion when injured mid fight.

Keep in mind that there are also issues of engaging in survival combat on broken terrain, in which case you often want to be flatfooted. For self defense, you should learn how to fight flatfooted. In weapon fighting, the general rule is that the smaller the weapon the more you want to be on your toes like a boxer, and the longer the weapon the more flat-footed you should be, with the divide being at about sword or cane length.

Most of all, when your ankle begins to roll, let it. Do not fight it.