Friday, April 29, 2005

What is deal with the ankle rehab bands?

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of stores carrying the ankle rehab bands. These bands provide resistance on the ankle to help rehab faster. Most manufacturers offer a simple booklet or rehab program that can be used with their product to rehab an ankle.

The question that I have is are they really effective in rehabbing a sprained ankle?

Here's my 2 cents worth on the bands.

They are similar but a little more advanced than one of the old ankle rehab regimens the trainers in college put me on.

Here's how it went...I was supposed to push the side of my foot against a chair leg rotating everything through my ankle. First I would push the outside of my foot for a count of 10,15 or whatever and then I would push the inside of my foot against the chair leg for a count of 10,15 or whatever.

The theory was that I would strengthen my ankle isometrically, but I never really saw any benefits from these exercises.

Why?

First because they required a significant amount of effort. I had to really think about what I was doing in order to do the exercise properly.

Second, these exercises hurt me. The pure nature of what I had to do in order for the exercise to work was painful and often resulted in stiffness the next day.

Third, the exercises were boring. I had to focus on rehabbing and could not do anything else or I might hurt myself more.

Fourth, the effectiveness of the exercises was lessened because they were only addressing the strengthening of my ankle in 2 dimensions not 3. By doing the exercises I often found that my ankle would start hurting in other parts because everything was not being strengthened equally. My rehab program was not balanced.

Ankle Rehab is already a chore. You'd rather be doing something else. There is no reason why an ankle rehab program can't have built into it a 3 dimensional balanced approach so that no matter how much attention you are paying to your rehab, your sprained ankle gets rehabbed the best it can.

An ankle rehab program should have a balanced approach to strengthening, stretching and flexing the ankle so it heals more effectively. It would be even better if the program was virtually fail proof so that the quality and effectiveness of the ankle rehab was consitent and predictable regardless of the amount of attention you spend on doing the exercises the proper way.

If you want a rehab program that if guaranteed to bring results and that will give you consistent and predictable progress, then you need to go to my website at www.fastrehab.com right away and order the program.

With my program you will be able to watch TV, surf the internet, complete a report for work, help your child with their homework and be totally assured that your ankle is being rehabilitated the best way possible.

No other program I know of works better. Hundreds of satisfied customers are proof, the program works.