Why You Should Care About Your Feet!
3 min read.
There’s a combined total of 52 bones in your feet – that’s about 25% of bones in your body! Not to mention the number of muscles in & involved in the foot!
There’s a combined total of 52 bones in your feet – that’s about 25% of bones in your body! Not to mention the number of muscles in & involved in the foot!
We know so many different ab exercises or bicep curl variations, exercises to tone up, or lose our bingo wings, or whatever… but the two little things underneath you that hold you up?! The things that are literally your foundation?!
They get squashed into shoes and only thought about when they smell!
Foot pain is ridiculously common, (like the famous ‘Plantar Fasciitis’) but weak feet can also contribute to things like ankle instability, balance issues, and even cause a cascade of pain in your knees & hips.
Think about it: if the base that’s holding you up isn’t strong, every muscle above will tighten up to compensate. You’ll stand differently, walk differently, your muscles will fatigue faster, your power generation will decrease, niggles & pains creep in… and the longer you don’t address them the worse it gets.
BUT there, adding a small amount of strengthening work can have a MASSIVE change on how your body feels, so here’s how to can easily get started!
Begin With Your Toes!
Just bringing awareness to your toes and trying to move them is a super beneficial first step!
Can you:
- Lift your big toes up with your little toes pressed down
- Then, life your little toes up with your big toes pushed down
Use your hands in to help you if you need!
At first it may feel like you’re trying to bend spoons with your mind, but once you start getting the hang of it, it’s incredibly satisfying! Plus, when you start doing it for reps for a few minutes you’ll feel all kinds of muscles in your feet & arches waking up!
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Have A Wobble!
Once you have the toesies moving, you want to hone in on your balance.
Doing prolonged periods of balance is a life hack to improving not only your feet, but ALSO your body’s overall stability! The longer you can go for, the more benefits you get!
This is one of my absolute favourite drills for working on balance:
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You’ll feel the muscles in your feet really fire up, plus your ankles, knees, hips and core will be activated and strengthened just by having a wobble!
Build Strength!
Outside of isolated balance exercises, there’s other strength exercises with high foot-strength demands that are great to add to your training regularly so you get extra foot gains while you’re just doing your normal training! For example:
- Calf Raises & Single Leg Calf Raises
- Skipping
- Split Squats
- Single Leg Deadlifts
Think of anything that gets you wobbling, balancing or working those feet!
Same as any strength movements, make sure you can nail the positions slowly with control before adding intensity or weight to them – you don’t want to go to hard too soon and end up with pain or bad habits!
Or Follow Along with Me!
If you want to super charge your progress, then try adding in a devoted foot session once a week for a few months. This is a great way to build your foundation and giving you “smarter” feet that work better.
If you have been prone to reoccurring bouts of Plantar Fasciitis or foot pain/weakness, then building on these exercises will be your silver bullet:
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Working on your foot strength just stops you running in to issues later down the road (pardon the pun). It’s 100% worth the time investment, and once you have a better feel for how your feet should move, you’ll find you move them more just throughout the day naturally!
Set an alarm in your phone now for a time to try the exercises in this blog! Don’t let yourself click away thinking “I’ll definitely have to try that”
Have an outSTANDING day!
READY TO GET STARTED?
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