About a month ago, walking slowly along a flat section of dry pavement, I managed to twist my ankle such that my foot went 90°s wrong, it swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. Sorry, no GoPro footage.

For balance, I never seem to injure myself on the bike. [/tempting fate]

Since the swelling went down I’ve been ok to walk on it, and I don’t notice it when riding, but there’s an underlying pain that has remained fairly constant for four weeks now. I’m wary of doing anything that might aggravate it. Have I died? How long do these things take to be rid of?

Took about 12 weeks for mine to calm down, and even then still felt it tweaking occasionally (usually on a skateboard!).

Got mine bouldering with my sons. Actually, I got it walking back to the car FROM bouldering, just trod a angled rock a bit funny, weight on it, OUCH!!!! Could barely use the clutch.

Full recovery? Never…

First turned my right ankle about 15yrs ago and did it again on Saturday for the nth time.

Have you tried physio? After a pretty nasty hyper-extension of tendons in my foot it was the only thing that worked. Did it around 20 years ago and it still gives me a small amount of discomfort occasionally.

A decent ligament injury can be as debilitating as a fracture, as others have said, you may have a weakness there forever.
After care for soft tissue injuries in this country is poor, one essay i wrote for a recent course focused on invertion and eversion injuries to the ankle….in some Scandinavian countries (i forget which) they have recognised this and follow up on a serious sprain with physio and the use of balance boards to not only build up the strength again but to improve proprioception, the sense of body positioning from the individuals point of view.
There are propioceptor cells in muscles, ligaments etc and with the inner ear (balance) they go some way to establishing the mind-muscle connection…the NHS are unlikely to fund this unless your job depends on use of that ankle but physiotherapy has become more affordable in recent years and there is loads of information and exercises on the web to try out.

in some Scandinavian countries (i forget which) they have recognised this and follow up on a serious sprain with physio and the use of balance boards to not only build up the strength again but to improve proprioception, the sense of body positioning from the individuals point of view.

I got this on the NHS

Go see a physio, do the exercises and follow their advice to the letter. They’re tricky things ankles, with a lot of opportunity for causing long term chronic pain (or so my physio told me). Nearly 17 years ago I seriously sprained my ankle climbing, it took 6 months before I could walk without a limp, nearly a year before I could run on it. Now I have strange boney lumps on it which restrict movement and it still causes me pain if I try to run on it for any distance. One of my old climbing mates ended up having his fused recently cos he never allowed it to heal properly back in the day and went through nearly 15 years of constant pain!

Wish I hadn’t asked now. 😡

I’ll give it some more time, figure it’s a little too late for physio to do much.

Never too late for a physio IMO (I’m not a physio BTW!), especially if the problem is not improving. At the very least they’ll be able to diagnose it and advise on exercises to improve the recovery. If there’s nothing majorly wrong then you’ll have bought some piece of mind which is often worth the money in itself.

I had a long term ankle problem that I just couldn’t shift (admittedly I was doing a couple of nights of judo a week with it heavily strapped) for around 18 months. GP was fairly useless with advice but on a tip from someone who had similar problems I got a wobble board to work on proprioception. I threw away my strapping after 2 weeks.

Its still occasionally troublesome but the point being, it is the type of issue that can drag on without achieving a full recovery, but if you can identify the right kind of proactive measure for your particular injury the improvement can be massive.

I got a blow up wobble board from Amazon and its been ace

I badly sprained my ankle 14 years ago, did the right things, but got the wrong advice from GPs etc. and finally feeling a bit of arse for demanding a referral to a consultant got it fixed (I hope!) back in August, and have just started riding my bike again, it’s fantastic!

From my experience, the important thing to do is make damned sure you do your phsyio. Get some theraband(s), get a wobble board, and get yourself down to a physio, and follow their instructions.

After 6-8 weeks of being well behaved, start doing stuff that could put your ankle at risk of another sprain, and keep an eye on things. If it goes again, get yourself down to your GP and get a referral to an orthopaedic consultant. Don’t take excuses like “It’s only a soft tissue injury” or “Some people have weak ankles”.Get an expert to have a look at it. My ankle didn’t present as being mechanically unstable as far as my GP was concerned and he managed to fob me off for years, but under investigation by the consultant, my ankle joint opened up by around 20 degrees on one particular test, and was most certainly unstable (normal opening is around 5 degrees).

I did mine once, and thought it would be fine in a couple of weeks. It took 2 years to heal fully…

If you’re comfortably walking about already though you should be fine. I was still on crutches at that point I think! Exercise it. Wobble boards, balancing on one foot, draw the alphabet with your foot, etc. You might feel it, but it shouldn’t hurt as such when you’re doing this.

It does weaken the muscles and re-occurrences are common, so be a bit careful for a while.

I’m no doc…just the voice of experience.