The diaphragm and chronic ankle instability.

I have been treating the global manifestations of unaddressed chronic ankle sprains for decades now. I am never unsurprised to find frontal plane hip weakness and dysfunction of the same side obliques , shoulder and spinal stabilizers. Here is one more piece of proof that unaddressed ankles are monster problems, slowly eroding the stability of the system.
But, shame on those who attempt to simplify this, just correcting the breathing and throwing some corrective spinal stability work at this problem. This approach will fail, repeatedly. At some point the ankle has to be addressed and the impaired supra spinal programming. Gait will have to be retrained as well, forget to do this and your efforts will be muted.
-Dr. Allen

“Previous investigations have identified impaired trunk and postural stability in individuals with chronic ankle instability (CAI). The diaphragm muscle contributes to trunk and postural stability by modulating the intra-abdominal pressure. A potential mechanism that could help to explain trunk and postural stability deficits may be related to altered diaphragm function due to supraspinal sensorimotor changes with CAI.”

Reference:

Diaphragm Contractility in Individuals with Chronic Ankle Instability.

Terada, Masafumi; Kosik, Kyle B.; McCann, Ryan S.; Gribble, Phillip A.  Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise:

http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/publishahead/Diaphragm_Contractility_in_Individuals_with.97497.aspx