[pct-l] Ankle Strengthening

[Scott Williams]

In my humble opinion the most important thing for ankles is to walk on
trails, the rougher the better.  When you walk pavement you strengthen one
set of muscles only, whereas walking a rough trail forces all your ankle
and foot muscles to work and get stronger.  Certainly hike carefully, but
every time your feet hit the trail at a slightly different angle you are
strengthening a much more complete set of muscles than if you only hit in
one prescribed movement.

Also, start doing toe lifts.  Hang onto a banister and put your toes on the
edge of a stair tread and slowly lift yourself and lower as far as you can
go.  Do it every day and it helps build strength in the foot and ankle.
There's probably some other really good simple exercises out there beyond
this.

The discussion of boots vs trail runners or less (Amoeba has hiked over
5,000 miles in crocs and books on trail) goes on forever, and is great to
listen to as there will no doubt be some very good posts for both.  My
experience is that in years past when I trained in boots I twisted my
ankles pretty often.  Switching to runners that offer no ankle support
forced my ankles to get stronger.  Twisted ankles used to be a regular
occurrence, but I can't remember the last time that happened, not once on
my thru hike with light weight runners.

Great question.  Now lets hear the case for boots.

Shroomer