The Site Of The Pain Is Not The Source Of The Pain

Time and time again I try to explain to people how often ankle and foot injuries are not really “ankle and foot” problems, but rather symptoms of overall poor posture. I recently showed someone how to heal an ankle injury by correcting overall body posture, which I will share about here as a way to demonstrate how this plays out in real life:

Leslie sprained her ankle on February 22nd of this year. The prescription from the doctor was ice, anti-inflammatories, immobilization, a boot and physical therapy (all of which focused on the site of the pain, which in this case was Leslie’s right ankle). She came to me about 4 weeks ago, frustrated and wondering why she was not getting better.

Her initial posture photo shown below revealed a lot in addition to just the obvious ankle pronation (pronation is a word that means rolled in at the ankle joint). Her right shoulder was drooping, her body was rotated right to left, her right hip was elevated at 7 degrees and her knees were buckling in (valgus).

The solution: A total body tune up. As you can see from this photo that there was a lot more going on that just a pronated ankle. Leslie committed to seeing me twice a week and to working a routine of posture exercises at home which take her 30 minutes. These exercises focused on neutralizing the rotation through her torso and hips and decreasing the elevation of her right hip. Today (4 weeks later) Leslie’s ankle pain, inflammation and bruising are gone. Leslie worked her ankle pain away by fixing many of her posture issues. She is back to jogging with no pain.

The next step is to continue to progress her exercises to improve lateral hip and ankle stability to prevent this injury from happening again in the future. There is still work to be done, and Leslie is on a great path to success if she keeps this up. You can do it Leslie!!