Fins for bad ankles

Triathlon Forum
1

Hello all,

At 36, I have been a competitive cyclist and triathlete off and on for 25 years. Three years ago, I tore the anterior ligaments in my left ankle very badly, and have only now begun to reach full recovery following two major surgeries (the last including screws, tendon grafts, etc.). I’m unsure if I’ll ever be able to run again, but I am cycling without pain and really want to get back in the water. My workouts usually include some pretty serious kick sets, and I am looking for fins that will give me a good workout but reduce the amount of torque on my ankle compared to my old zoomers. My ankles are already hyper-flexible after decades of this (even after the surgeries), so a stiff fin meant to increase flexibility would not be appropriate for me.

Do any of you have any suggestions? I have been looking at the Tyr split fins and the Laguna Fitness Fins, and would be interested in feedback on either of those or other ideas from folks with ankle issues.

Thank all of you very much in advance for your help!

Cheers,
Jonathan

2

I had this done to my knee and I just gave up on kicking. It puts too much pressure on my knee…fins especially. Nowadays I’ll max kick a 50. I’m 1.5 years out from surgery.

If you can kick then good for you. But you can’t kick without putting pressure on your ankle and knee. You don’t really need a strong kick for open water swimming anyway.

If I do use fins, I use the Zura brand. They are longer than those cheapo red zoomer things and that might be sufficient to put more stress on your quads/hammy and not your ankle.

Again, I think this is a bad idea, but not all surgeries are the same…

3

My suggestion is that you needn’t be doing lots of kick sets for the triathlon ‘version’ of swimming (swim training perhaps I should say).

The fins then become a moot point.