My ankles are learning trials too! I often commute to and from work. Almost every night I do about an hour of trials or riding around with my son on uni's. This morning I noticed some tendon pain on the top of my left foot where it curves to meet the ankle. Prticularly when (bicycle) climbing. I get out of the saddle. Would this be soreness from strengthening or should I wrap my ankles when dropping and hopping a bunch? Anyone with experience in this matter? I'll keep doing what I'm doing but opinions would be nice.🙂 Jeff
when hopping/dropping, one thing that I find is VERY important is to have your feet seated correctly on the pedals. How I do it, is to put the arch of my foot over the pedal. This makes it so that when your body drops on the pedal, and all your weight is pushing down on the rear of your foot, you don't have with a bunch of leverage making more strain on your ankle. If you have teh ball of your foot on the pedal, like in bicycling, there's a lot more strain, and that can hurt after dropping things. I do it every once in a while, and I REALLY don't want to do it off of a 6' drop.
-- Fuego - Unicycle Ninja
"Unicycling is more about the center of concentration than the center of balance."
I had similar pain after a lawn dart landing off a loading dock last year. My heel dropped quite a bit on landing. I've got 10 years on you and for my riding style I don't drop higher than picnic tables anymore (not that I ever went big).
Fuego's comments on foot placement are right on. If I want to continue riding I probably will never experience an intentional 6 footer. But I like to watch. 🙂
-- UniBrier - Its Time to Ride
Steve
Do your feet smell? Does you nose run?...You may be built upside down. -Old joke I found in a Mad Magazine many moons ago.
i have big feet and strong claves/ankles. i've found that proper technique is much better than good foot placement. i put them slightly forward of where you all do. i have snafu's and the back of the pedal is just under that start of the arch and the axel is just a hair behind the ball of my foot. i do have big feet though, so i dunno. i feel like i'm slipping off the front of the uni with the pedals as far back as you guys suggest. but then again a 4 foot drop is semi-intimidating right now. maybe when i'm up to six footers i'll see the light.
I recently fractured my talar dome which is the bone that supports the same motion you are describing, i think.
This brace adds a lot of extra support in the up and down motion of the foot without restricting your foot movement much at all. I find it a lot better than the active ankle supports that a lot of people are using.
The brace is probably only necessary for your back foot, as that is the one that takes most of the pressure during a drop.
I recently sprained my ankle really bad on a landing (it was my back foot). I might get one of those stabilizers, because 40 dollars is nothing compaired to the pain. Its been two weeks and I still cant unicycle yet.
*You shouldn't be doing anything that causes you pain. It means your injured, and need time to heal. Your only going to make complications if you don't allow time to heal.
Scar tissue/tendonitis (Sp?) and bone structure problems occure when 'favoring' injuries during exersise. Not to mention muscle over exersion on 'opposing' muscle groups to 'reduce' pain.
Those supports are for preventing injury or re-injury.
It you have pain there is a reason. *
I agree completely, I was talking about future use of the product (after my ankle has healed).
