The importance of your feet for whole body health

Vibram 5 fingers, love them or hate them, they’ve got your attention, Let’s talk feet.

Feet are amazing and totally under appreciated in the world of rehabilitation, strength and conditioning, running, cycling, walking, health and life. 

Yeah I said it. All those things. Taking care of your feet and allowing them to move as they have evolved to move (sorry fundamentalist Christians) can have life changing affects on how you experience the world and your chosen activities.

Did you know there are 26 bones and 33 joints with EACH foot. That’s basically 1/6 of all the joints and over 1/4 of the bones in your body in two feet. How you stand on them is important, in fact its key to moving your whole body well.

I bet you never considered how complex your feet were. 

Now if they are that complex do you think it could be for a reason?!? Do you think those bones should be able to articulate with one another?? Do you think yours do?! If so I’ve got some bad news. Pretty everyone who comes to see me has feet that do not move well at all. My teacher, the badass @garyward_aim has a set of 5 big rules of motion. I’m guna mention the first 2.

1. Muscles lengthen before they contract

2. Joints act, muscles react

So, if we look at the foot joints being “stuck”, “stagnant”, “not moving” then how can we expect the 20 odd muscles of the foot to be loaded/unloaded, to move blood from the feet back up the body along with lymph, to experience there full ranges and be capable of handling whatever loads we through at them.
It’s imperative for whole body health and movement that we can allow the join within the foot to move as this will Allow the muscles to be taken from centre, to their end ranges in all 3 planes of motion as the muscles and tissues are lengthened and shortened.

We will discuss this idea of why moving our feet is important for whole body health in more detail tomorrow. But I’m the mean time take your shoes off, give your feet a bit of attention and love and just stand and feel your feet. 

Pay attention to them in a standing position and feel where you are most connected to the ground…left or right foot?? Inside or outside?!? Balls (of feet 🤣😜) or heels?!? 

Take a few minutes to scan your feet and make a bit of that, we can see what happens over time, see if that changes 🙌🏻🙌🏻. 

Improving posture and gait in traumatic brain injury…using Anatomy in Motion.

The wonders of understand the human body and movement through the lens of @garyward_aim and his anatomy in motion lens.

This week I started working with a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling three floors  from a roof.

The Left Hemisphere Traumatic Brain Injury left him with Right Sided Ataxia (A Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement )along Painful and slow walking for 21 years.

When we explored what his feet were doing on the floor, how he stood and walked there were some pretty key things happening that would affect his balance. 

Getting his foot tripod on the floor was a big one and allowing the joints to move as they have evolved to suddenly have him a strong, deep grounded sensation. 

He could also actually balance on his foot which he said he hasn’t since his accident. 

If a brain is to maybe relearn lost movements, perhaps we need to change the lens through which we rehab them. 

Gary ward has 5 big rules, one of which is that rather than looking at the body in a way that muscles move joints, we get the joints to move the muscles. 

How does that even work?? We all know that the muscles pull on the bones to move the joints right??

Well perhaps yes, while we are working out, trying to get fit and strong, but in gait, as we walk, no. 

Take 20 seconds right now to stand up, close your eyes and just observe yourself in space. 

Observe how you cannot stand still.

Observe how you drift forward/back/left/right

All without having any control, your joints are moving/swaying/falling with gravity and you muscles are reacting to hold you upright.

This is the same principle we put into practice when working with our lens turned to see through anatomy in motion.

If someone, say this clients, balance/gait is hideous and we just say it’s due to his accident and tough shit, but don’t dig down, we are doing ourselves and them a disservice by not looking into some fundamentals of how perhaps we are reacting with our environment 

This clients feet, had compensated to his new way of walking such that he was on the outside of one foot with his toes gripping the floor, holding his tripod away from the ground.

The optimal tripod is when we have out 1st/5th metatarsals and our heel all firming connected neurologically with the ground. If just the big toe rather than the metatarsal head is grounding, it can throw the whole body off.

Because of this, he always felt as if he was standing/walking on a thin blade of his foot, Making walking, standing balancing feel off balance, uncomfortable and unsafe.

By allowing the bones to move the muscle, using AIM wedges, by getting the client to relax and try to do less, the foot bones did the only thing they could really do and following the joints shapes they have.

As the joint surfaces in the foot glide over one another properly, the muscles attached to them will have no choice BUT to lengthen, causing them to slow the movement and pull those joints away from their end range.

This is really where, in this kind of brain injury, I would suggest the best changes can be made. By not making the body try to move but by allowing the body to move itself so that all those tissues are just lengthen to slow movement down naturally to return it to centre. 

And what seems to be even better is that, perhaps, even in a brain injury where the movement has been lost for 20 years, that very movement is actually hardwired in and when it feels that ability to pass through centre, to both lengthen and contract properly, the brain grabs hold of that movement and says “I’m keeping that”.

Efficient movement is hard wired into us, efficient movement is less energetic meaning we would have more for over endeavours, evolutionary speaking. 

If we can have a body that wants to stand upright, stacked on its axis’ properly then it gives the greatest amount of of opportunity to both lengthen/contract, flex/extend, rotate left/right and always return back to centre. 

As if I wasn’t already aware that Gary Ward’s anatomy in motion model was the best through which to view human movement, working with a traumatic brain injury that’s 20 years old and seeing such a marked change and have the client also immediately notice it too, just puts the cherry on the cake. 

If someone with a traumatic brain injury can begin to move and feel better within 90 minutes, perhaps you can too. 

Why not get in touch to start your own movement journey to move with less pain, more confidence and a far greater understanding of your own body and how to move it better in the future yourself.