in this video we will highlight key factors for designing ankle sprain rehab programs and show you a couple of example exercises you can use enroll in our online course now link is in the video description hi and welcome to Physiotutors after an acute lateral ankle sprain return to participation can be expected from as soon as one day following the sprain to a little more than three weeks or longer. depending on the desired activity or sport that the patient wants to return to. with a supervised exercise program targeting specific impairments a faster recovery can be accomplished and it helps in the prevention of re-injury. if you want to learn more about a framework of factors influencing return to play, check out our synopsis at the link in the top right corner. but how should or could a rehab program look like? from personal experience with a series of lateral ankle sprains and reading more research into the topic i have learned a lot and want to highlight a couple of key points in this video. but before we start discussing the interventions i want to stress that as always this is not a cookie cutter approach and depending on the demands of the patient or the availability of equipment that you may have for rehab, the sessions can vary. the ideas presented in this video are merely a sample of what's possible. if you identify with this reasoning hit the subscribe button below and give this video a like so more people can see it so let's get right into it. an ankle sprain is a soft tissue injury and Dubois and Esculier highlight a sensible approach to such injuries in their 2020 editorial in the BJSM that you might be familiar with: PEACE and LOVE. an acute injury initially requires PEACE for one to three days. PEACE is an acronym for Protection, Elevation, Avoid NSAIDs, Compression and Education. for detailed explanations of each item check the reference in the video description down below. once pain has settled the second acronym LOVE takes effect. "L" in this case stands for, you probably guessed it, "Load". early and normal movement is the best way to promote healing of the injured ligament and builds tissue tolerance through mechanotransduction. "O" stands for "Optimism". "V" for "Vascularization" and "E" for "Exercise". again for details on each of the items i highly encourage you to read the editorial in the paper. link is in the video description. but you're probably watching this video to get some ideas on rehab exercises you can use from early to late stage rehab of an ankle sprain so let's start with simple early movement exercises. regaining full range of motion early on is important. most of the time a heavy focus is laid on regaining ankle dorsiflexion but less so on plantar flexion. from personal experience when rehabbing my own ankle sprains during physio studies i have had more difficulties with regaining ankle plantar flexion that prohibited kicking in football a ton. however, this has also been shown by Abassi et al. in 2019. so what can be done to regain range of motion in both dorsi and plantar flexion? however the ligament gets injured in the frontal plane so therefore gradually challenge movement in that plane as well. blue yellow blue red blue green now i'm curious to know what are your favorite exercises to use in ankle sprain rehab let us know in the comments section down below if you want to learn more about lower extremity rehab of several conditions check out our selection of online courses on physiotutors.com the link is in the video description as well we hope you enjoyed this video and as always this was andreas for physiotutors i will see you in another video bye