Lifting on BAADD Ankles

Hi,

 One of my friends came to me for some advice.  He has horrible ankles (he said his doc described one of them as "the ankle of a 65 year old" and the other as "the ankle of a 85 year old").  Point being, he has HORRIBLE ankles and can't run or stress them really.  Yet he would love to workout his legs in the gym, but obviously cannot do exercises like squats, deadlifts or anything that requires him to stabilize his ankles.  I recommended leg curls, leg extensions, seated good mornings, reverse hypers, ski squats, and umm, the one where you trap your ankles under something while on your knees and bend forward, thereby killing your hammies.  

What do you SUGGEST?

Thanks.

In what regard are his ankles horrible? If I were him I’d be looking to rehab them if at all possible.

How about surgery?

i would recomemnd squats. When he can stabilise a bodyweight squat, then lunges.

Gotta build up the strength. Otherwise it will always be holding your friend back.

There’s no reason why eventually they can’t have very strong ankles and make great progress with squats, deadlifts, lunges etc. But they have to start small and think big.

[quote]Sxio wrote:
i would recomemnd squats. When he can stabilise a bodyweight squat, then lunges.

Gotta build up the strength. Otherwise it will always be holding your friend back.

There’s no reason why eventually they can’t have very strong ankles and make great progress with squats, deadlifts, lunges etc. But they have to start small and think big. [/quote]

Well, it has to do with the bone stucture… He has a lot of water in his bones which induces bone spurs (sp?) Rehab doesn’t work becasue you can’t rehab bones, he IS looking to get surgery but that’ll take some time and a lot of down time. Bottom line is, he can’t put too much direct weight on his ankles (which is why I said no squats).