foot

Welcome to the second blog post in our series on running. My name is Michelle Ball, and I am a Gokhale Method™ teacher in Tasmania. I am a life-long runner, and am passionate about sharing my experience with beginners and would-be beginners, as well as seasoned runners and everyone in between. If you missed Part 1, you can catch up here. 

Reactivate your feet

When it comes to advice about running, the feet often get overlooked as the subject immediately turns to shoes. While shoes are an important subject (spoiler alert! Part 3 is about shoes), I prefer to start with that miracle of bioengineering that actually does the work—your feet.

Our feet become very passive from walking on flat, featureless surfaces rather than natural, more undulating terrain. They are also constrained, misshapen and deconditioned by less-than-ideal footwear, which, sadly, includes many running shoes on the market.

Running on sand trains my feet to grab the ground and push it behind me.

Learning to engage and strengthen my feet has been a game changer, enabling me to recover from old running injuries and enjoy running into my sixth decade. I would therefore like to share some well chosen exercises you can do in addition to training on the job. These will both strengthen your feet and train them in better patterns of muscle recruitment. Your feet will soon engage more actively than they are likely used to doing. 

Some basic anatomical knowledge can help us get to know and appreciate our feet. This beautiful 1850s engraving (by Henry Vandyke Carter, Gray’s Anatomy) illustrates the primary arch that gives the foot its convexity. Wikimedia

Exercise 1: Inching your way to stronger feet

Inchworm is an excellent warm-up exercise, mobilizing the toe joints, mid foot, and heel bone, contracting and releasing the plantar muscles, and lifting the inner arches and also the transverse arch which spans the base of the toes. It mimics the grabbing action our feet naturally make when accustomed to walking on more varied surfaces.

This video shows how my plantar muscles contract and release to inch my foot forward. I alternately release my heel, and then my toes, from the ground.

Exercise 2: Kidney-bean shaping the feet.

One of my favorite Gokhale Method® concepts to help develop strong, functional feet, is “kidney-bean shaping.” Like inchworm, it strengthens the four layers of plantar muscle, helps raise the inner arches, and also preserves the transverse arch which spans the base of the toes. Restoring tone in these areas confers the springiness you are looking for and protects against common foot problems such as plantar fasciitis, Morton’s neuroma, and bunions. Infant’s feet have this more bean-like shape, and this is the shape preserved into adulthood among more traditional, nonindustrialized societies around the world.

Infants’ feet have a notably bean-like shape.

In nonindustrial societies a bean-shaped foot is maintained throughout life.

In addition, kidney-bean shaping the foot enables us to find a healthy outward angle for the feet and legs, and weight in our heels when standing. This multipurpose exercise is taught in all three formats for learning the Gokhale Method—our in-person Foundations course, our online Elements course, and our Pop-up course. Directions can also be found in Esther Gokhale’s number one best-selling book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, and her DVD (streamable), Back Pain: The Primal Posture™ Solution.

These photos show how, if you have a tendency toward flat feet (left), kidney-bean shaping can restore your arches, and counter any tendency to being pigeon-toed (right). It also guides your big toe home, reducing bunions. Modeled by Tegan Kahn, our Gokhale Method teacher in Australia.

Exercise 3: Bob before you jog

If you are not in the habit of jogging, or even if you do so already, it is good to ensure you jog with spring in your feet. This contributes to both push off and, most importantly for injury prevention, absorbs energy on impact. This is a natural, effective, and sophisticated mechanism that uses your muscles and foot structure rather than relying on heavily padded shoes to cushion your landing. It helps care for and protect all the weight-bearing joints in the body, as well as your feet. 

CAUTION: If you have back pain or reason to believe you may have spinal degeneration, we recommend you take one of our courses to learn appropriate techniques to protect your spine before doing this exercise.

Getting started with bobbing 

I recommend you start bobbing by shifting from one foot to the other with the heels scarcely leaving the ground. Initially just a few minutes may be plenty, and you can develop resilience for greater bounce and duration over a number of weeks. I like to suggest students play music and make it a dance. A few tracks each day will quickly build strength in your feet. 

Esther demonstrates bobbing on the feet. These clips are from her 1-2-3 Move program for Alumni. Each 15-minute Dance Party has bobbing covered!

Bobbing is a very adaptable exercise for all levels of foot strength—from slowly shifting your weight from one foot to the other, to your first split second of being airborne. As you get stronger you can intensify the work with more skipping and even hopping. 

Free Online Workshops

If you would like to find out more about how the Gokhale Method can help support you, whether you are currently sedentary or a seasoned runner, sign up to join one of Esther’s upcoming FREE Online Workshops.

Spring is in the air! As the temperature rises, we go for lighter footwear, exchanging our shoes for sandals, or going barefoot. It may have been a while since our feet had so much exposure - what can we do to benefit our feet and put a little spring into them?

Babies and Toddlers

For babies, the question about ideal footwear is easily answered - a baby is best off barefoot so she can feel the stimuli of different contours and surfaces. These induce her to engage and strengthen her arch muscles as she learns to crawl and then walk. Minimize putting shoes on infants, as this inhibits the natural development of their feet and affects their learning to move and walk well.

Toddlers and older children, as they venture into unfamiliar or less friendly terrain, may need protection for their feet. For any age group, choose a shoe that allows the foot to retain its natural kidney-bean shape.

Choosing Healthy Footwear

Avoid shoes that point or curve the big toe away from the inside edge of the foot. Heels that are higher than 1-2 inches pitch your weight forward onto the ball of the foot – avoid shoes with very high heels.

Well-designed shoes have a kidney-bean shaped footprint, pronounced arch supports (unless your feet are super strong and/or you're paying attention to your gait), and shock-absorbent soles
 

Healthy Foot Practices

Adults sometimes develop foot problems like bunions despite wearing well-shaped shoes. They may even see this as something that runs in the family – “my mom’s feet are exactly the same”. While it is true that our genes predispose us to certain problems, often it is poor postural habits that actually allow structural problems to develop. For example, if we have copied how our parents stand and now also park our pelvis forward and lock out our knees, then an excessive amount of our weight will fall on the front of the foot.

A pelvis thrust forward displaces body weight forward and puts excessive pressure on the delicate structures in the front of the foot

This is problematic because it flattens the transverse arch and causes distortion through the delicate joints of the forefoot – result: bunions, hammer toes, sesamoiditis, metatarsalgia, etc. It is the sturdy heel bone with its dense, cross-fiber construction that is perfectly adapted to take most of our weight. In Lesson 3 of the Gokhale Method Foundation course, when we teach this shift in tallstanding, most people feel somewhat odd, and have to reassure themselves that they don't look odd by looking at their reflection in a mirror!

The heel bone in our species is a sturdy bone adapted for weight-bearing. The bones in the front of the foot, by contrast, are delicate and not constructed to bear the weight of the body.

Bear in mind that our ancestors continually exercised their feet by walking on softer, more contoured surfaces than we encounter today. Compared with a hunter gatherer's foot, the modern urban foot tends to be underused and weak. Flat, or pronated feet misalign our ankles, which results in misaligned knees and hips, wear-and-tear, and arthritic change in the lower body.

Walking barefoot on the beach - depending on how you do it, this can be great foot exercise or destructive for the ligaments of your feet.

Supportive foot-beds, orthotic insoles, and arch supports can be a real help in correcting this sort of distortion. However, while shoe inserts do help to reshape the arches and restore mechanical advantage to the foot muscles, they are no substitute for learning to actively reshape, exercise and engage the feet. The inchworm exercise below is a great way to begin strengthening important muscles in your feet. After you master this exercise, integrate it into every step you take - grip the ground ahead of you, "pull" the ground towards you and then "push" it behind you. This builds the kind of strength and spring you want from your feet, and an elegant glidewalk will result from it!

Click here to watch.

Best,
Esther