Before you start working on lower section of your body, make sure your feet underneath you are steady. Weak and wobbly feet are easy precursor to several types of muscle injury. There are several muscles around your ankle and each of them helps in stabilizing and moving your ankle.
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How to get bigger ankles?
In order to increase size of your ankle; you should either gain fat or muscle. Gaining fat to get bigger ankles is not recommended as fat is not considered healthy. It may even impact your health negatively, which leaves you with one choice to get bigger ankles i.e., focus on gaining muscle. There are around 29 muscles associated with the human foot and 10 of them only being ankle muscles. (Source: National Library of Medicine/ NCBI)
These ankle muscles help you to surround your ankle joints and work to move your foot and toes. Performing targeted exercise regularly helps these muscles to grow up. There are several exercise and foods specifically targeted for foot area of your body. Here on this article today, we will explore everything about how to get bigger ankles:
Exercise for ankles
When you move your muscle on one side of the ankle joint, the ankle moves in certain direction and muscle on opposite direction stretches this helps in strengthen your ankle muscle. Most of the ankle strengthening exercise are focused only on ankle stability but do not strengths the muscle. Here are some of the best exercises for getting bigger ankles:
1. Weighted Ankle Lifts
For this exercise you will need an ankle weight and chair. Take a seat and tie around your ankle weight of about 5-8 kgs on your foot. Now rotate your ankle in alternating cycler motion while lifting the weight for about 30 to 60 seconds. Rest for 30 seconds and repeat another 3 sets. Perform these steps 4-5 times a week for optimum results.
2. Toe Curls
Toe curls are easy and relaxing exercise and you do not require any sort of extra equipment. Grab a soft cloth like towel and lay it down on the ground. Place your feet on a towel and hold one end of a towel with your feet finger and curve it as shown in the image. Repeat it for 5-10 minutes daily to grow bigger ankles.
3. Toe Pick-ups
Toe pick-up is like toe curls and focus on same muscle as the one in curls. To perform a toe pickup, you will need two bowl (flat shaped) and some marbles. Get 10-15 marbles on one of the bowls and next one empty. Keep each bowl around 2-3 metre apart and now pick up the marbles with your feet and transfer to next bowl without stepping on a floor. To challenge yourself, you can increase the distance between bowls.
4. Towel Tugs
Towel tug will help you to uplift ankle flexibility and stretch calf muscles. Sit down on the floor or couch, keep your knees 90 degrees straight to your waist and loop a towel around your feet. Now, pull the towel back and forth for 1 minute and hold for 30 seconds and repeat for 5-10 minutes.
You can also use resistance band instead of towel tugs. See our resistance band triceps exercise for more information.
5. Bent-Knee Wall Stretches
Bent-knee wall stretch exercise will help you to stretch your deeper calf muscle that are connected to the Achilles. In order to perform this exercise, place your palm against the steady wall with one leg forward and one leg back. Now lower your heap to seated position without moving your hand from the wall. This will not only stretch your ankle but also your whole body. Bent-knee wall stretches are one of the best exercise for getting bigger ankles.
6. Negative Calf Raises
Negative Calf Raise is quite a bit risky if you are not careful. This exercise will help to strengthen your toes, calf muscle and help you to get bigger ankles. You will need a step stool (not recommended) use stairs within your house (recommended). The reason why we recommend the house stairs is because they are steadier, and you are less likely to fall. Always use the most bottom step so, you will not hurt yourself. Lift yourself up with one leg and slowly slide your standing feet to the halfway and stretch. Try balancing yourself for 10 seconds and repeat.
7. Foot Roll Exercise
Foot roll massage helps to relive plantar pain and is a good massage to your bottom of the feet. Grab a tennis or cricket ball and place it on your floor. Now press the ball with bottom of your feet and roll it. Instead of the ball, we recommend using ice water bottle as it is more affective. Doing foot roll exercise once a day for whole week will help you to get bigger ankles.
8. Isometric Toe Contraction
Isometric toe contraction helps to relax your feet fingers by contracting it. It is more kind of massage than exercise. You will need help of a partner to perform this massage.
Lie down on the bed and ask your partner to stretch and contract your feet. Also, try stretching whole feet which makes it more relaxing while stretching your muscles.
9. Standing Heel Raises
Standing heel raise exercise helps you to stretch muscle of your feet’s bottom part. Stand in a steady floor with your leg stretched apart. Now, slowly raise your body by just going up on your toes, exactly like women wearing high heels. Hold yourself for 15-20 seconds and repeat for 2 to 3 sets of 10. Be careful to balance yourself.
10. Squat Jumps
Squat jumps have numerous benefits your muscle and helps you getting a bigger ankles. In order to perform this exercise, you need to begin in standing position with feet hip wide apart. Slowly lower your body to the ground and jump straight up. Continue jumping straight up pushing your toes while squatting between each jump.
11. Drawing Exercise
Drawing exercise helps you to stabilize your feet while exercising your feet. This is pretty straight forward exercise. Stand straight and hold your body by rising your toes and draw or write every single alphabet with your foot.
These muscle strengthening exercise around your ankle helps you to get bigger ankles and improve weakness and instability of muscles around the ankles. These home exercises can usually relieve pain that can be brought on by the weakness of ankle muscles. Your ankles help you to balance and stabilize whole body. Ankle disorder can cause injury to ligaments, fractures, tendonitis so, all these home-based exercises are worth trying.
Apart from these exercise, you also need to be careful about what you eat, here is a simple guide to diet for getting bigger ankles. If you have any suggestion or anything to add on this ‘how to get bigger ankles’ article, please do so in comments below.
Diet for Bigger Ankles
The key to strength any muscles is protein and protein is what makes muscle to grow bigger and stronger. It also helps to generate new tissues and repair old ones. So, including protein to your diet is must for getting bigger ankles. We are not listing what you need to eat to get protein, but if you want to know, let us know in the comments below. We recommend you taking 2 to 3 grams of protein equal to your body weight proportion every day. So, if you are 50 KG, take 100-150 grams of protein every day.
In addition, include carbohydrate and healthy fat your diet as they are the primary energy source for the workout sessions. Also, include fruit and veggies to your meal as they are good source of vitamin and muscle for a complete muscle functioning. And lastly, drink a lot of water.
