What Ankles Know

I've been thinking recently about proprioception--the body's ability to know where it is in space. I only recently learned about this as a distinct attribute, and, as a naturally klutzy person, I feel particularly able to appreciate how amazing it is that the body can coordinate with itself and its environment--even as prone-to-spillingly as mine does.

The New York Times has an article today about how ankle injuries are correlated with poor balance and the most interesting point it makes, I think, is that after an injury the nerves that allow your ankles to know where they are, where the ground is, where the rest of your body is, and how everything is moving--or whatever information you need to be able to balance on two little toothpicks like we do--that part of the healing process is that these nerves need to be retrained. (The article suggests doing this by standing on one foot while brushing your teeth.)

This is interesting to me because I've had some ankle problems recently, and have noticed that just in the past year or so I can no longer jump in and out of boats the way I used to. Or scramble over rocks. I've described the feeling as "not trusting" my ankles, but really the article gets at it more precisely; it's not really a confidence issue or that I don't trust my ankles, in the sense that I consciously expect them to fail me (I don't), but that they themselves seem no longer to know what they're doing. Since my goatlike springiness and confidence on rocks and boats has always been one of my few and prized physical abilities, I am pleased that I might be able to get it back while brushing my teeth.

I was also thinking about proprioception and boats because as I was sailing a Laser yesterday I was marveling at how much more gracefully I can move around that little boat than I can do almost anything else. I'm still klutzy compared to other people who know how to sail, but it is an odd but extremely enjoyable sensation to do easily what you know intellectually to be an awkward movement. I was having a really good time and realizing that that was a big part of why.