Ankle cuffs

What are ankle cuffs?

Ankle cuffs are cuffs that close around the ankles and make an attachment point there. They usually have a D-ring, so a chain, a strap, or a bar can go on. Ankle cuffs restrain very little by themselves. Their job is in whatever you fasten to them.

What are ankle cuffs for?

For making a point you can attach something to. That is the whole trick, and it explains why a pair of ankle cuffs loose in a drawer rarely gets used.

The encyclopedia lists the usual combinations. Around wrists and ankles together, one set of cuffs gives you a hogtie. Add bands the width of the thighs and you get a frogtie, heel against the buttock. Most of the time ankle cuffs go with something else, and nine times out of ten that something is a spreader bar: legs at a fixed distance, and there they stay.

That is also why ankle cuffs land differently than wrist cuffs. Your hands you can still rest somewhere. Legs spread and locked change your whole posture, and you feel it in places that have nothing to do with your ankles.

Where ankle cuffs run into trouble

On weight. An ankle cuff looks like you could hang someone from it. You can’t.

The encyclopedia is brief about it. Ordinary bondage cuffs are not designed to carry any real load, and for suspension there is a separate product, the suspension cuff. With ankle cuffs that is the difference between a bar between the legs and one ankle holding the entire body weight. By eye you cannot tell the two kinds apart.

The rest is the same build as any other cuff. Wide and lined spreads the pressure; narrow and hard puts it on one edge. Even a cuff that fits well can do damage the moment no one is watching anymore. And anyone walking in ankle cuffs walks with a shorter step. That is exactly what the steel police version is meant to achieve, according to the encyclopedia, which on a staircase or a slippery floor is no longer a game but a fall risk.

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Sources

• Bondage cuffs. Wikipedia. Supplies the wide build lined with soft leather or faux fur, the D-ring with nylon strap or chain, the hogtie with wrist and ankle cuffs, the frogtie with thigh-wide bands, the use together with a spreader bar, and the finding that ordinary bondage cuffs must not carry any real load and that suspension cuffs are a separate product for that.
• Legcuffs. Wikipedia. Supplies the description of ankle cuffs as a restraint that allows only walking with a shortened step, and the synonyms leg cuffs, leg irons, shackles, footcuffs, and fetters.

Related terms

• Restraints. The family ankle cuffs belong to, with the difference between leather, nylon, and steel.
• Bondage. The practice where ankle cuffs do their work, with the rules of thumb.
• D-ring. The hardware that lets an ankle cuff attach to something.
• Door cuffs. Wrist and ankle cuffs that use the door as an anchor point.
• Handcuffs. The same idea around the wrists, with the ratchet, the double lock, and the wrist nerve.
• One bar prison. The bar that brings wrist and ankle cuffs together on a single point.
• Wrist cuffs. The top pair, the ones that turn ankle cuffs into a hogtie in one click.
• Hogtie. The position that follows from it, with its time limit.
• Spreader bar. The other thing ankle cuffs lock into, the one that holds them apart.