Hockey players have weird af ankles
Unnecessary answer hour returns!
This is in fact true.
There are two bones in your lower leg. One’s big and buff and one’s pretty wimpy. When you walk, that big tibia takes ~80% of your weight of impact, and the fibula only has to take the remaining 20%.
But skaters place their weight differently over their feet. In principle a hockey player has 100% of their weight shifted forward onto their tibia.
You can actually see the implications of this in practice. If you break your fibula, 20% of the weight-bearing is gone, and you won’t really be able to walk. But a hockey player who cracks their fibula can and will keep skating almost without noticing something’s wrong. This happens pretty damn often when they block shots. You’ll see them skate easily over to get checked out, step up onto the hallway floor, and then suddenly slump over, with medical staff helping them limp off down the hallway.
I hear people saying, “oh, guess he’s fine!” when hockey players get up and appear to be skating okay: nah. And when a player wants to return to the ice: they may genuinely feel better skating but be too injured to walk.
And over time, if you’re in the weight-bearing position for skating more often than walking, and are skating from a young age, yes, that affects the shape of your weight-bearing bones and external appearance of your legs and feet. I don’t have a survey on hockey players’ shapely ankles compared to the normal population in front of me at the moment, but every single skater I see could be identified by their ankles
I thought this was going to be someone condescendingly explaining hockey to me but this is so informative and well written and I trust you with all my bones now.
