Kick this off with a little test.

Strongest leg first.
Stand on your strongest leg and extend the other foot to the fromt, side and back.
Like front kick, side kick and back kick positions.
Repeat on the other leg.

Now try the same with your eyes closed.

If you find yourself wobbling about, then you need to work on your ankle strength and the associated stabilising muscles.

Troublemaker!

Kidding. Actually a good self-test for us all from time to time.

Trailblazer wrote:
Troublemaker!



Wobbler!

Would this not also be to do with overall balance as well Mule rather than just ankle strength alone?

Might I say, that my favourite way to build ankle strength is... Zhan Zhuang!!

Is there a way that I can set up my account to automatically post this answer whenever someone asks a question about something like this?

Don't think it's just ankle strength...also means you need to know how to ground yourelf better and also have a lot more core strength to hole your body in position mainly...your ankle's basically the balancing point and no matter what stance you're doing your core always your centre of gravity so i think it's more important to learn to control that personally.

Same applies when people try to kick higher than they're actually capable of and end up leaning backwards to reach extra height resulting in them either falling back on themselves when they bring their foot back down or simply falling over haha.

So yeah ankle strength plays a part to it but I think that excercise in particular would rely more on flexibility and core control to be honest. Just my opinion but good excerise though .

Li

Some interesting thoughts.

You know that the ankle is the joint furthest away from the heart, so it receives the least blood supply.
So in periods of inactivity, it is the first area to lose muscle and strength, most noticeably towards the calf.

So if you've had a layoff, or wonder about your overall level of strength and fitness, this is quite a good test to do.

Here's how far you can take it;

Well, once again I've discovered I know far less than I thought about yet one more thing. Is this what getting old means? An endless horizon of expanding ignorance?

The core strength idea, or what Jimmy H Woo would call keeping your center (while maybe taking his ), is an important point which I hadn't thought of in this context. And I do believe that ankle strength and flexibility is important, too. Have especially noticed this the last year or so as onset arthritis seems to be setting in to my left ankle. Sometimes hard to maintain the balance that used to be so easy, and I don't believe it's any loss of muscle tone.

Trailblazer wrote:
Is this what getting old means? An endless horizon of expanding ignorance?

"Just when I knew all of life's answers, they changed the questions..."