I dig on TOMS. I bought a pair of black canvas ones for wearing around at night (after I strip off the brand labels, that is).
I don't mean to derail the subject of period footwear with some evolutionary-biomechanical soapboxing, but it's pretty relevant and necessary.
Now to the meat of the issue:For those of you who buy in to the ankle support noise, take a second to read this: First off, ankle support is not a requirement of the human body in general. If you have any kind of medical condition (old injury or a tendancy to broken bones like osteoporosis, et al.), then please: listen to your doctor and not me; I do know about this, but then again I didn't spend 5+ years in medical school. That said, if you discuss the options with your doctor, you might find they'll be willing to work with you and suggest a way that you can work to strengthen your ankles (or knees, potentially) and leave tight laced high boots and/or braces behind.
If you're a (relatively) young, healthy person, then what you've been taught about ankle support is probably total *. If you're (more than a bit) overweight, you may experience issues and (short of losing the weight) will either want to take extra caution (read: time) with weaning off ankle support or go ahead and ignore the rest entirely until you lose weight. The human body is a very finely tuned instrument, but it was not tuned to function under the conditions an abundance of food modern society allows us to access puts us in. That is, if you're fat: your ancestors weren't. Be careful.
The human body has been nudged this way and that through random genetic mutations for millions of years. One of the results of this process is that we're pretty well designed for running fast over long distances across many varied types of terrain.
The majority of people who run for sport today buy in to the cushion-your-stride line of thought. This might not cause issues for some people but for many will inhibit the natural function of your body and lead to more issues down the road as your body becomes unable to compensate. For instance: shin splints. Check this out (from Wikipedia):
Most shin splints can be attributed to overloading the muscles of the lower extremities or biomechanical irregularities. Muscle imbalance, including weakened core muscles lead to more lower-extremity injuries; also the inflexibility and tightness of the gastrocnemius, soleus, and plantar muscles can contribute to shin splints.
Over time, imposing constraints and/or assisting joints or muscle groups will lead to those joints or muscle groups either failing to develop properly or deteriorating from their current status. This can accompany other unassisted muscle groups' development which can result in an imbalance which allows once part of your body to handle a certain workload but leaves another part woefully short. Ankle support falls in to this same category.
The upright bipedal form humans enjoy has been around for
millions of years. How long have shoes with crazy tight ankle support been around? I'll be super generous (read: wrong) and say 12,000 years -- about the time of the invention of agriculture in human history. Again, providing for great leniency, the first 100%-without-a-doubt hominid that exhibited nearly exclusive bipedal locomotion was
A. afarensis, which existed between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago. Let's go ahead and call it 3 million years.
Barring illness, deformity or any other abnormality, do you think that humans could overcome 3 million years of evolution in ~10,000 years of technology (For those of you who don't have an evolutionary background, the answer is a resounding
no)?
What does this mean? Ankle support is total * for most people. This doesn't mean that you should throw out your boots and go fight for 12 hours barefoot. If you've been relying on external compression to support and reinforce the bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons between your calf and foot for your entire life, then the muscles that should be providing this support are poorly developed and going full bore very well could result in any number of injuries that may lead to permanent problems.
Take it slow. Do you always wear boots with ankle support? If so, cut it out you **** nerd. Wear a pear of sneakers, dress shoes or nothing at all. You're looking for something that doesn't rise above your ankle at all. Wear them as much as you can. If this causes any kind of ache or pain, be careful. It's possible that it's simply muscle aches because you've been a * for 20 years, but at the same time, it could indicate a larger more serious problem.
Wean yourself off ankle support. Go for a short run in the most minimal shoes you own. Do it again. Whenever you feel comfortable, try fighting or a similarly footwork intensive activity in the most minimal shoes you have. Soccer, boxing, tennis, racquetball, or any number of other activities. Make sure to take it easy and listen to your body -- don't do anything dumb.
Once you've built up enough strength in your foot and lower calf muscles, you won't feel like you're going to injure yourself every time you stop on a dime after a dead sprint or step in a rabbit hole unexpectedly. Additionally, the more minimal your footwear is the better and more responsive your footwork can be in fighting. Depending on your abilities, this is probably one of the biggest factors that will lead to increasing your fighting skill.
TL;DR: Cave men didn't have ankle support. Quit being a * (medical conditions and special situations exempted).