Your feet are an incredible piece of engineering, yet they are rarely given the attention they deserve. Hands and feet are key elements for kinetic movement information. Of course, there is information coming through eyes, ears and skin, but whatever hands and feet feel, heavily affects what your brain is going to choose as your next move. Just think about what happens when you step on a nail. The body immediately knows to pull the foot up and quickly drop the other one to avoid falling.

The fascinating harmony disabled

Feet are the foundation for your body and if any part of your foot is compromised, imbalances and tension occur, and the whole system compensates.

Each foot has 26 bones and a network of 33 joints, 117 tendons and ligaments, and 19 muscles that work in synchrony to absorb impact and return it in dynamic ways that allow our species the ability to outlast any land-based mammal on the planet in terms of sheer efficiency and versatility. They are nimble enough to give us stability on ice and strong enough to allow us to walk on rocks and even hot coals. They are resilient enough to enable us endless walks and even ultramarathons.

Yet we somehow believe they need to be supplemented with technology to keep them safe and protected from movement and the environment. For me, it almost feels like a crime constraining our feet into tight and rigid footwear with high heels. Our feet, just like the rest of the body, continually adapt to the environment we put them in. Reducing your feet’s range of motion (ROM) and depriving them of sensory experience from the environment comes at a great expense to your health and well-being.

Your health starts with your big toe

There are 4 layers of muscles that make up the intrinsic muscles of the foot which during walking help to slow down the arch as it softens to absorb energy and naturally flattens. This, in turn, then sets the foot up to stiffen and return energy. Intrinsic foot muscle activity is highest during the late stance, which is when the trail leg is behind the body and the big toe is flexed upward as the heel lifts.

The ability of the big toe to extend upwards and the foot to create an arch is the key to un-tapping the hidden potential of the foot and transferring the energy efficiently.

Test it yourself

What’s your big toe’s ROM? When you lift your toe up does it create an arch in the foot? Try with the unloaded foot first (for example while seated), then stand up and try with loaded feet. There shouldn’t be a drastic difference.

As you go through a gait cycle, the toe on the foot that is behind should go through full extension to create a rigid lever to push off. The feeling of any constriction during the late stance of your gait cycle might indicate a poor ROM as well.

Poor foot mobility translates to poor movement, uneven weight distribution, less efficient muscles being activated to keep you upright and balanced, inefficient energy use and a signal to the brain that you are unsafe which immediately means disabling maximum power output to prevent you from getting injured. In the long run, this inevitably leads to chronic pain which seemingly comes out of nowhere but it has been building up for years, maybe decades.

The shoes we wear are the major contributor to this lack of mobility. It is like wearing a cast, the muscles inside the cast atrophy and you need weeks or months of rehabilitation to get back to the original range of motion and strength. The same happens with our feet when we not only don’t stretch and move them through full ROM but also lock them up in these ‘foot coffins’.

Ankle mobility

One of the big downsides of the modern lifestyle is the loss of ankle mobility. This doesn’t sound like a big issue compared to other ailments that are plaguing society like diabetes, and cancer, but I would argue it has just as big a piece of the pie when our well-being is concerned.

Ankle sprains are one of the most common sports injuries. Additionally, chronic pain affects 20% of Americans and costs more than cancer, diabetes and heart disease. A big reason for this is the sedentary lifestyle and restrictive uncomfortable footwear that deprives us of putting the body through the full ROM it once had. To imagine all the mobility we have as babies and toddlers which comes naturally to all of us, and to throw it all away to be able to sit on chairs and wear shoes all day is quite sad. Today, kids as early as six years old lose the ability to go into a deep squat due to loss of ankle mobility.

When your ankle can’t go through a full ROM, not only your squatting (i.e. sitting down and getting up from a chair or toilet) and hip hinging (like picking up something from the ground) are affected, but also your walking and running. All the exercises you do in the gym can suffer from poor weight distribution. As always, your body will find a way to execute the movement in the best way it can, but in the long term, it is surely going to come around and bite you.

Test your ankle ROM

To perform a simple ankle mobility test you can download a free inclinometer app (a tool to measure angles). Set yourself up in a half-kneeling position with the leg you are measuring at a 90-degree angle to the ground. Place your phone on your tibia (shinbone) so the meter shows 90 degrees and then track your knee forward over the lateral side of the foot (over the outer two toes) until the heel starts to come up. Find the point just before it does and read the measurement.

The normal ankle range of motion should be at an angle of 35 degrees or less, ideally 30 degrees. If your reading is more than that, there is room for improvement. The more you are away from it (45 degrees or so) the more you have to be careful with activities that require ankle mobility, stability, and strength, especially if they are loaded (including running).

When you think of it, there aren’t many daily activities that don’t involve a good ankle performance.

Conclusion

The importance of your foot and ankle strength and mobility is far-reaching. It heavily affects your posture, stability and the economy of energy expenditure throughout all your daily activities. If foot and ankle strength are compromised, compensations occur, which inevitably leads to chronic pain and injuries somewhere else in the body, usually the neck and lower back.

Find ways to liberate your feet from the shackles of modern life and let them support you the way they are designed. There are numerous exercises to improve your foot mobility. Find more content on this topic on my new YouTube channel or get in touch for individual coaching.

Resources:

https://thereadystate.com/blogs/orthotics-am-i-giving-up-a-soul-for-a-sole/

https://www.functionalmovement.com/Articles/377/testing_the_ankle_to_prevent_reinjury

The Alignment Method by Aaron Alexander

Movement Podcast

https://illumin.usc.edu/walking-in-high-heels-the-physics-behind-the-physique/