Wow, its been a long time since I've been on here.

Anyway, I joined a womens only kickboxing club a few weeks ago but recently I've been having a lot of trouble with the skipping. This is because during the skipping my ankles become really painful, its sort of like an achey kind of pain (I never had this problem the first couple of weeks I started). Today I have to wear bandages to support my ankles because it's fairly painful to walk, I don't know if I'm just skipping wrong or what. I also have this small blue bruise on the side of my right ankle (it looks sort of like a blood blister, but deeper into the skin).
I just wanted to know if there was a proper technique to skipping and if I've seriously damaged my ankles.

Thnaks in advance

There only thing to be aware of with skipping, is that you need to be landing on the balls of your feet, not the Heels, too much, or you might cause yourself Shin splints.

The other slight possibility is you could have Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome, which is very similar to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

Tarsal Tunnel affects something called the Tibial Nerve, that runs down the inner side of the ankles, and underneath a Fibrous mass called the Tarsal Tunnel, there's also some Connective Tissues running through there too.

The problem can result from exercising or using the area quite a lot, and pretty much causes pressure on the Nerve itself. It can be relieved with NSAIDS, (Non-steroidal Anti-inflammatory things), possibly an Ankle Brace, Cortisone Shots, RICEing, (Rest Ice Elevation Compresson), or in the last resort, something called a Tarsal Release, where the Fiberous Tarsal Tunnel is cut, and relieves the pressure on the Nerve, and then it should heal back with scar tissue.

You could be assesed for Tarsal Tunnel, with something called an NCV, (Nerve Conduction Velocity Test), where an Electrode stimulates a Nerve to fire a signal, and another Electrode measures it.

The likelihood of you having T T in both Ankles, is highly unlikely, as T T is not that common to start with, but I couldn't say 100%, it's not possible to have T T in both Ankles.

However in this instance, I would still veer towards a Shin Splints scenario, as you may well have been skipping, and forcing the Heels onto the floor, as well as the balls of the Feet, and caused repeated jarring of Shins.

I would therefore utilise a Rice Method.

Rest.

Ice, which means icing the Areas, for 10-15 minutes about 3 times a day.

Compression, you could use a cold cloth for this, but it might be hard, as you might have to compress both at once, or one alternately after the other, so you might find it difficult to do this, and perhaps may want to omit this from your recovery regimen.

Elevation, keep the Shins off the floor as much as possible to avoid stressing them.

For future referance though, when you're skipping use the balls of your feet, don't bring the Heels down onto the floor, and you should be alright. I don't think this is in any way connected to the Osgood Schlatters you've had, as in possible Flexon issues with the Knee affecting technique, it's simply you probably landing on the ground with the full of the foot.

P.S. great thing for you to join a Kickboxing Club. I hope when you're feeling more recovered, you keep doing it, I think more females should do that kind of thing, and then some of them might not be the victims of things like muggings, or physical and sexual assaults.

You should be proud of wanting to do that as well as your weights and other stuff, so hopefully you'll be back on it again, soon, and I wish you a speedy recovery and best wishes with everything.

You should be very proud of yourself. There's a lot of people your age not into the things you're doing, and you'll be physically better off in the future for it.

GOOD JOB .

Now that you mention it, I think I have been landing on the full of the foot rather than the balls of them. I looked at the possibility of having tarsal tunnel syndrome but as you said, it's really unlikely that I've got it in both feet.
I'll try the Rice method you suggested as I've got a few days till my next lesson.
Thanks for the help Boss .

No worries. Let us know how you get on if you like, just so we know how things are. Good luck, and take it easy yeah .

Well after I started this topic, I went and tried the RICE method and my ankles felt alot better, but my left ankle still aches a bit no matter what I do. I told my parents and they said that joints are a weak point in my family so I suppose I'll always have this problem and will most likely have to wear a support for it

you can easily overcome weak jonts with soe proper heavy raining...heavy wts strengthen the connective tissue of joints...hell basically exrcise in genral really, don't go the support option either, that will do nothing for you