Treat your feet like a bicep.

Yea, I think a lot about feet. Partly because I get asked a lot of questions about feet, partly because of my own issues with foot injuries. I'm a dancer after all. My feet are pretty important! It occurs to me that most people take that as obvious, but what is more striking to me is that people don't realize the importance of their own feet until they hurt! It's not just dancers that suffer from foot injuries.

A lot of my clients ask me about "foot support." After many years of trial and error for myself, in depth study and simply watching my clients and students, I have come to a few conclusions and realizations of simple facts.

Fact: Feet have muscles in them. Like any part of the body you want to be healthy and functional, those muscles need to be stretched and strengthened.

Fact: Our modern day world provides us with lots of hard, flat surfaces that don't do much to sufficiently challenge our feet to become strong.

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 MY THOUGHTS :

If you train your feet like you would any other area of the body you want strong and healthy, say like a bicep in your upper arm,  you'll be on the right track.

Our feet need protection and challenges, not support.


You don't put a rigid brace on your arm to carry groceries. You do cover your arm with a coat... or a wetsuit, to protect it from the cold.

If you lift your own groceries your muscle gets stronger. Lift a dresser and you will be sore, prompting the natural desire to stretch out your arm.

Of course you would wear a cast if your arm was broken. The same goes for feet. If you have an injury then your feet do in fact need support until the injury heals....but remember what an limb look likes when it comes out of a cast? The same thing happens to the muscles of the feet if you always wear support. They atrophy. In my opinion foot orthodics are like a cast. Wear them when you are injured or the challenges to your feet (standing for a 14 hours shift at work maybe) are greater than the abilities of your foot, but don't expect your feet to hold you up if you wear them all the time!

We need to interact with our environment to strengthen our bodies to meet the challenges of that environment. Tom Myers (anatomy guru and demi-god in my opinion) says the amazingly adaptable fascia in our bodies will reconfigure to the demands we place (or don't place) on it. (He is not the only person who says this but his work is well documented.) I agreed! Feet are no exception.

Get out there and challenge those feet.  Kick off those shoes (Lots of interesting thoughts if you search natural running.) walk barefoot in the sand (great strength and stretch program!) and dance!!!