How to Keep Fit With a Broken Ankle

Keeping fit with a broken ankle is entirely possible if you put your mind to it. Some people that break their ankle might take the easy way out and say that exercising is dangerous with a broken ankle. Lower body workouts such as jogging and biking are certainly out of the question, but there's no reason why you can't do upper body workouts and carefully monitor your diet.

Things You'll Need

• Light weights

Show More

Instructions

• 1

  Monitor your diet. Create a list of food that you eat on a daily basis and take note of any unhealthy food that you tend to eat. Try to cut this food out of your diet if you want to keep fit with a broken ankle. Maintaining a healthy diet is even more important when you have a broken ankle because exercising is going to be more difficult. Use the resting metabolic rate calculator from the Mayo Clinic to determine how many calories your body burns in a day without exercise. If your resting metabolic rate is 2,300 calories then try to consume no more than 2,300 calories in a day if you're trying to keep fit with a broken ankle.

• 2

  Maintain your cardiovascular fitness. Use an arm bike to elevate your heart rate without applying pressure to your broken ankle. Most arm bikes have heart rate monitors that will allow you to see how many calories you burned and how high you've elevated your heart rate.

• 3

  Do strength training exercises. There are plenty of upper body strength exercises that you can do that won't affect your broken ankle. Biceps curls, bench press, shoulder press, and triceps extensions are just a few of the upper body exercises that will keep you fit.