Happy feet
Did you know that the hands and feet combined make up more than half the bones in the human body and that your feet alone make up over 25% of the muscles and bones in your body? Our feet alone have more than 100 muscles and ligaments that we rely on for hours of every day to keep us upright and balanced.
So why do we ignore them when we are working out?
If a wheel on a bike isn’t fixed and working as it was designed to, it will affect the smoothness of the ride. It's no different for our feet, if our feet aren’t in good working shape the rest of the body will start to make compensations ultimately affecting our knees, hips and spine. Our feet were designed to walk on many different surfaces, by walking on varied ground it starts to wake up muscles in the rest of our body. For the most part we shove our feet in tight fitting shoes that don't allow movement in the feet and this ultimately affects the rest of our body.
Here is a self assessment of how well you are using your feet and a way to help us understand that how we stand on your feet can affect your whole body. I do this with my Teen Pilates class to really help them to understand how their bodies work, try this yourself:
Close your eyes and really feel the connection of the feet to the floor. Are you are standing more on one foot than the other or sitting back on your heels. Notice how the rest of your body feels, all the way up to the top of your head.
Now, eyes still closed, spread the weight of the feet across the whole of the foot and push into the ground like you are a sunflower growing into the sky, feel how the muscles of the body switch on.
Imagine a little army of ants walking under the arches of the feet. By gently lifting the arches of the feet feel how this brings a connection to the midline of the body and helps you feel more supported maybe even more stable through the pelvis.
Shift the weight gently into the balls of the feet and feel the front of the body switch on, then gently onto the back of the feet and feel the back muscles switch on. Then onto the left foot, then the right.
Just from this little experiment we can see how important our feet are and how we really do need our feet to ensure good posture and balance. In my Studio classes we work and stretch the muscles of the feet in every session, we think about the alignment of the feet in relation to the rest of the body and ensure that we have good range of movement at the ankle, knees and hips.
However you don’t need to have a reformer to work and stretch the feet. Try going barefoot, walk on different surfaces such as sand, pebbles and grass and roll the feet on a tennis ball.
There are plenty of foot strengthening exercises on you tube you can try aswell, but here is a good article with some exercises that I also recommend.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320964.php…
Have a lovely day all!
Karen.