Training while wearing an Aso Evo Ankle Stabilizer

andeey

tl;dr at bottom.

BACK STORY:
Five weeks ago, I tore a bunch of ligaments in my left ankle and have been using a walking boot to get around while everything heels. This week, I visited my ortho and he said my ligaments have heeled, but I lost strength, stability and flexibility in my ankle so I can't actually take a step on my own yet and prescribed physical therapy twice a week for a month, which I start next Monday. At my request, the doctor gave me the Aso Evo Ankle Stabilizer and said I will "graduate" to it as I started working in physical therapy. I mentioned I work with a personal trainer at the gym and he wants to start adding lower body back into my routine and asked if I could use the brace for that, which he gave his blessing (my trainer has a background in sports medicine, too, so I'm comfortable with that).

QUESTION:
Has anyone used this type of brace while working on strength training and how did you do it? When I put the brace on, I can take a couple of steps and I have no problem with full body weight pressure on the bottom of my foot for standing. However, I can't put the foot and brace into a shoe because it's too bulky. I can either go buy a pair of tennis shoes that are too big to try and fit that in or just put a big sock over the whole brace and train with one shoe and one sock. Any tips/tricks/suggestions? Alternatively, am I trying to do this too quickly and should wait until I'm done with physical therapy before adding lower body back into the routine? Both I and my trainer are frustrated at my lack of ability to do more than push/pull at the moment.

TL;DR:
How to wear/use an Aso Evo Ankle Stabilizer for my ankle at the gym when it doesn't fit in a shoe?

dittmarml

I have an orthopedic disaster area for a body and have been in braces, on crutches, in PT, off and on most of my life. A couple of things:

First, you're in a stabilizer because your ankle _isn't stable_. That means (among other things) that it moves in directions it shouldn't (even if you're not aware of it), that the load isn't distributed "normally" among your ligaments and muscles from moment to moment, and that the strength you need to shift/distribute load and maintain the integrity of the joint without additional injury does not now exist, and that the flexibility you need to enable free movement without injury isn't where it should be (meaning tissue gets pulled in directions or to a degree it's not prepared for.) PT will build strength so that eventually those ligaments and muscles can reassert their role in stabilizing the joint and enabling your motion (and enabling you eventually to take on greater loads to build more strength, etc) but right now that isn't the case.

As you already know the stabilizer helps all this by unloading the ankle - but your physical therapists are going to be gauging how to build your strength and the very first thing they need to know is what else you are doing...so, first my suggestion would be that you need to talk with them, not your trainer, about the gym situation, first. (By "not your trainer" I don't mean that the trainer isn't competent - just that the PT folks probably ought to be the guiding force at the moment.) They should be able to make suggestions. Best possible world might be to get them together with the trainer for a chat.

Assuming you've already done that, my own untrained suggestion would be that you do whatever you need to do to equalize your lower body as much as possible - I like the idea of getting the bigger shoe if you must do that training...but otherwise perhaps work with the trainer to find ways to maintain conditioning as much as possible, but make allowances for the fact that you're just going to have to wait a while to get back to your entire routine...?

Don't know if this is actually helpful or not...

andeey

Thanks for the response, I appreciate your perspective.

Bumping to see if others have comments.