Choice PT: Herniated Discs

Move to Live Your Resource to Moving Well and Living Life

Each foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, and 100+ ligaments, tendons, and muscles. That’s a whole lot going on in a relatively small area. Raise your hand if you or someone you know has dealt with pesky plantar fascia issues, heel bone spurs, achilles tendonitis, painful bunions, inner ankle pain with or without numbness/tingling in the foot. (You can put your hand down now, people are starting to look). Not all things are preventable. We all have been dealt our own hand which can genetically predispose us to certain conditions, thanks Mom & Dad. BUT, a number of these issues can be avoided or be significantly less bothersome by taking some actionable steps. First, we need to figure out if your “flat feet” are: STRUCTURAL or FUNCTIONAL. Structural means that’s just you and no matter how hard we train your muscles and foot posture, your arch likely isn’t going to improve much. In this case, an external support like an orthotic can work really well. Functional means that you have some low hanging fruit. Ultimately, your body has adopted a flat foot posture but can correct out of that and achieve an arch. In this case, training muscles and foot posture can make a big difference. If this is you, solely relying on an orthotic can have a negative impact over the long term because the muscles that support the arch and the muscle memory in your foot can get lazy, placing all the responsibility on the orthotic. Test time! Stand with feet parallel and roughly 6 inches apart. Keep your feet pointing forward and twist your body to the right. Look down at your right foot. If you had no arch when you were standing facing forward and then twisted to the right and an arch magically YOUR OWN ARCH NEMESIS (continued from outside)

appeared in your right foot then you my friend have a functional flat foot on the right. Time to grab that low hanging fruit! If you started with a flat foot on the right and twisting to the right didn’t raise your arch at all we consider that a structural flat foot. If you’re having foot symptoms and haven’t had the orthotic conversation, may be worth it. Repeat the same process on your left side. If you just learned you have a functional flat foot there are many things you can do to retrain the muscles that support the arch. Before exercises, postural habits are the starting point. When you’re seated and standing, check to make sure that your feet remain parallel. If you’re like most people, your right foot will be pointed towards 1 o’clock and your left pointed towards 11 o’clock. If you allow your feet to point outwards repeatedly over time, your arch will continue to slowly get flatter and flatter. Now that you have your feet parallel, imagine your feet are glued to the floor and gently pull your knees apart so they align over the outer one-third of your foot. Voila, that should pull your arch nicely off the floor! Some of us were just dealt flat arches however most of us can make a couple quick changes to our foot posture and seriously impact the rest of our foot. Don’t be your own arch nemesis! Let me know if you need any help figuring out which type of arch you have.

Have a great month, Joe

www.choiceptny.com

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