shoes

Welcome to the third blog post in our series on running. My name is Michelle Ball, and I am a Gokhale Method® teacher in Tasmania. I am a lifelong runner and am passionate about sharing my experience with beginners as well as seasoned runners and everyone in between. Even if you don’t run, but do wear shoes, this blog post is for you!

Active feet come first

When it comes to advice about running, our feet often get sidelined by the subject of shoes. If you missed Part 2, which is about how to build healthy, active feet, we recommend you catch up here. 

The job of a good running shoe—performance and protection

At the level of elite sport, running shoes are designed with increasingly sophisticated technologies to enhance performance. Time will tell what long-term effect these may have on athletes. From the Gokhale Method® point of view the primary purpose of all shoes is to protect our feet and our weight-bearing joints while still allowing us to move as Nature intended. 

A lightweight, barefoot-style shoe gives my feet sufficient protection and lets them be active on a soft, forgiving surface like this sandy coastal trail.

Cushioning the joints

Over the last 50 years, the increase in urban running on hard surfaces, combined with a reduction in healthy posture and biomechanics, has made for a perfect storm of running injuries. These include runner’s knee (patellofemoral syndrome), Achilles tendonitis, shin splints (stress involving microfractures of the tibia), and plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the bottom of the foot). The design of modern running shoes has seen many innovations, twists, and turns, but one clear trend has been to increase the amount of protective padding in the form of thicker, spongier soles, air bladders, and gel at chambers. Whilst some degree of cushioning for the joints is desirable when running on unnaturally hard surfaces, it is now thought that overly thick soles reduce proprioceptive sensitivity and actually encourage runners to hit the ground harder. 

This contemporary road running shoe is heavily padded. From the Gokhale Method perspective, such bulk interferes with our ability to feel the ground and make softer landings and can encourage ankle turnover. Run4it

Strong, responsive feet combined with the natural gait pattern that arises from healthy posture can enable you to land more softly and avoid injury. Building in extreme cushioning cannot compensate for excessive heel strike and its damaging impact on poorly aligned joints. 

Healthy alignment of the ankle

The first time I experienced a running injury was in my twenties. I had bought a new pair of shoes. The salesman measured me and recommended shoes that were designed to prevent overpronation (inward turn) of the foot. They felt good in the store, but after rolling my ankles more than once, I realized the shoes recommended were predisposing me to injury. I found out later that I tended to supinate my feet very slightly and not pronate them. Having shoes that were heavily padded on the inside edge to keep my foot from rolling in, increased the chance of my foot rolling out. The result for me was torn lateral ligaments and crutches on several occasions for six weeks at a time. Once I even had a hairline fracture on the ankle coming down off a boulder. I learned the hard way how important it is to have your ankles well aligned. After buying shoes for normal ankle alignment, I didn’t roll my ankles anymore.

Your weight should align centrally and distribute evenly (left). In overpronation (center) weight bears down more on the inner foot and the ankle veers inward, and in supination (right) weight is carried on the outer foot as the ankle veers outward.

You can do a simple check on your ankle alignment using a mirror or have someone take a photograph. You want to be able to see your heel and ankle from behind.

An overpronated foot may show distortion of the Achilles tendon (right). Wikimedia

Poor ankle alignment may also show up as an ankle bone protruding markedly over the edge of the heel. Here my inner ankle bone shows I am overpronating my foot.

Kidney-bean shaping my foot has now aligned my ankle well. The Achilles tendon is straight, and each ankle bone is better aligned on either side of the heel. 

You can also get useful information by examining the soles of your shoes, which may show more wear and tear along the inner (overpronation) or outer (supination) edge. Check several pairs to ensure that what you see is not peculiar to just one pair of shoes. Compare the left and right shoe.

Learning to correct flat feet

The postural techniques that we teach in our in-person Foundations Course, online Elements, and Pop-up courses, will often be sufficient to correct overpronation, or “flat feet” as it’s commonly known. Here you can learn the detail of, for example, kidney-bean shaping your feet and externally rotating your legs, with a teacher to guide you.

If, after putting some time and effort into solving the problem, it persists, we recommend that you get advice from a good running shop and use your Gokhale Method knowledge to help choose a shoe appropriate for you. They can advise you on which particular shoes can best support you while you continue to work on your posture, remodeling your feet, and realigning your ankles. As you can see in the diagram below, both these measures can support a healthier structure.

This diagram shows how overpronation of the foot can misalign the ankle, knee, hip and spinal joints further up the chain.

Insoles and orthotics as training devices

An insole can add the necessary padding and support to help you transition from a padded shoe to a thinner or barefoot style running shoe. It is important to make this transition alongside learning protective and strengthening posture and foot work. Take your time—start with occasional short training runs in your new shoes, build up the proportion of your running in them gradually, and be very attentive to your form. 

In the Gokhale Method, we teach students to use the contours of an insole as a training device, gripping it to actively strengthen the arches of the feet, rather than just to prop them up. If it is best for you to use a more padded shoe, perhaps because you run on hard surfaces and/or have some degree of joint degeneration, then it will likely have a molded footbed that you can use in this way. 

If you have prescription orthotic insoles to correct overpronation or supination, don’t stop using them abruptly. Try using them less often as your feet gain the strength to support themselves better.

Healthy shoes need to be foot-shaped!

One of the most common faults with modern shoes—including running shoes—is the shape of the toe area, or toe box. The toe box of most shoes is tapered to some degree, which distorts the natural kidney-bean foot shape that the Gokhale Method encourages. We are all familiar with the pointed toe in many women’s fashion shoes, men’s winklepickers, and even cowboy boots—yet it surprises me how this tapering persists in sports and activity footwear. Even some shoes marketed as “barefoot” or “natural” reflect the conventional wisdom of a straight foot, rather than a healthy bean-shaped one. 

             
Most running shoes assume the feet to be straight and tapered at the toes (left). Nature’s blueprint for our feet maintains the external rotation and kidney-bean shape that we all have as infants (right). This is preserved throughout adulthood in traditional societies and explained in Esther Gokhale’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back.

Note the bean-shaped contours and wide toes of this Indian woman’s feet. (Odisha, India, 2017) 
This strong, active foot would be constrained and deformed by a tapered running shoe.

Tipping forward/curve in modern shoes

Shoes with an upward toe curve have become increasingly popular. People like the feeling of forward momentum that they give, and they can encourage the glutes to work. Better to learn to use your glutes anyway, then this feature isn’t necessary, and you avoid the downside—the upward toe curve encourages your foot to peel off the ground passively, rather than grab and propel you forward. 

An upward toe curve depresses the transverse arch at the base of the toes. This concavity directs excessive weight through the ball of the foot and contributes to weaker plantar muscles and push-off. Run4it

I hope this blog post has helped you with your choice of running shoes. If you are in the market for a new pair, enjoy shopping with new confidence and purpose.

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.

When it comes to foot position, feet parallel is often regarded as the ideal in our present-day culture. Standing with the feet apart, pointing straight ahead, is also seen as the starting point of a normal and healthy gait. Walking then proceeds along two parallel lines, like being on railway tracks. 

In our culture today, standing with feet pointing straight ahead is regarded as normal, and the best biomechanical option. Unsplash

From a Gokhale Method® perspective, a healthy baseline position for the feet is angled outward 5–15°, or “externally rotated.” Why is there such divergence of opinion—and angle? 

Most people learn and then teach feet straight ahead

Feet straight ahead is the model learned and perpetuated by most professionals who are trained in anatomy, whether they are fitness coaches, yoga teachers, Pilates instructors, physical therapists, podiatrists, family physicians, or surgeons. Training regimens, gait analysis, shoe design, and equipment such as elliptical trainers and step machines are also based on this belief. 

There’s compelling evidence for feet out at an angle 

The Gokhale Method approach to solving back pain and the many other musculoskeletal problems that beset our society is not based on such current assumptions, but on direct observation of biomechanically healthier populations. The Gokhale Method understanding of healthy posture draws on field research among traditional and tribal populations in many parts of the world, where despite differences in culture, age, gender, and occupation, posture remains remarkably consistent—and includes a 5°–15° foot turnout. This same turnout can also be seen in our infants, historical artifacts, and our ancestral images prior to the early twentieth century. 

You can see that the feet of this woman in Odisha, India, angle outward.

Let’s look at some more examples of evidence for feet out. 

Ancestral and antique photographs

This Victorian photograph decorates a table mat at a country hotel in the UK. The group on the right all clearly show significant external rotation in their legs and feet.

These Scottish soldiers from the mid-twentieth century show degrees of foot turnout that would be uncommon today. Pinterest

Contemporary traditional and tribal culture

These women in tribal Odisha, India, habitually stand and bend with externally rotated legs, which orients the feet outward.

This snippet of video from a market in tribal Odisha, India, shows people walking with feet turned out.

The ancient world

As ancient Greek statuary became ever more naturalistic, it captured the outward angle of the feet, even lifting one foot to suggest walking or a relaxed, “contrapposto” standing position. Marble Statue of Serapis, from Amorgos, 2nd Century BCE, National Archaeological Museum of Greece, Athens. Wikimedia

Children

Children naturally externally rotate their legs from the hip joint, angling the feet out.

Being held in poor positions or sitting in furniture which tucks the pelvis will counter healthy external hip rotation and cause an infant's legs and feet to roll inward.

Extreme outward feet angles

Some dance forms, including those based on traditional posture, have evolved an exaggerated degree of external rotation for artistic effect. Several of the base positions of ballet take natural external rotation to an extreme. Such angles also feature in Indian classical dance. These angles work in people who have been raised with them from early childhood but can be impossible or problematic for modern hips which formed while using Western furniture, including seated toilets. Squatting and sitting cross-legged in childhood encourages healthy hip socket development.

The “first position” in ballet requires considerable external rotation in the hips to turn the feet out at 90 degrees. Wikimedia

There are numerous foot gestures in Bharata Natyam, a traditional Indian dance form, which require 90 degrees of outward angle in both feet. Pinterest

Footprints that follow a central line—not parallel tracks

Soft sand is great for capturing footprints, and those of tribal people will clearly show not only the external angle of the feet, but also how the heels touch either side of a central line. John Carter, one of our teachers in the UK, shares a telling tale: 

It was 2010 and I was staying in a beach hotel near a fishing village in southern India. Checking my well-thumbed copy of Esther Gokhale’s book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, it was instantly obvious who had left their footprints in the sand. Local fisherman left kidney bean shaped footprints, with strong indents from the heel and big toe, and landed with the inside of each heel on either side of a central line. Tourist footprints were wider in the center, indicating lower foot arches, and were usually placed along two parallel lines.

I was traveling with my yoga teacher friends and colleagues. We all admired the grace and poise of the locals, how beautifully they stood, walked, bent from the hips, etc. However, this was strikingly different from the posture that my yoga companions had been taught, in line with conventional yoga ideas. I was eager to discuss the differences, but my colleagues, confused by their received wisdom, continued to repeat what they had learned in training, which included sticking with parallel feet. 

Two sets of footprints from Brazil, showing both feet out and walking on a central line. Unsplash

In modern Western culture it is much more common that footprints are straight ahead and run along parallel tracks. Unsplash

A workman stepped in paint… the prints that his boots left on the sidewalk show a healthy angle of turnout, and that he walked on a central line—this combination is relatively rare in industrialized cultures (UK).

Why do feet point straight ahead?

From our anthropological perspective, having feet straight ahead is actually an inward turn from a healthy norm of “external rotation.” This has come about for several reasons:

• Weakened arches cause the foot to collapse inward (pronation), also rotating the leg inward.
• Concave “bucket” seating, soft sofas, “sling” style footrests, and other poor furniture all lead to poor posture and a lack of healthy external hip rotation.
• “Ergonomic” design and anatomical teaching are both based on the false paradigm that feet should be straight ahead.
• Fashion role models, footwear, clothing, and mistaken ideas about what is healthy perpetuate parallel or even internally rotated feet.

What are the benefits of feet out?

• Encourages kidney-bean shaped feet with strong arches and healthy function.
• Brings optimal alignment to the ankle, knee, and hip joints.
• Facilitates natural pelvic anteversion and a well-supported spine.
• Facilitates healthy deep bending (hip-hinging) as the pelvis can nestle between the thigh bones.

Feet pointing outward adds stability when maneuvering heavy loads, and, with a wider stance, aligns the legs and hips well for hip-hinging. This man is able to bend deeply to the ground.

If your feet are currently straight ahead, or somewhat internally rotated, and you want to move toward external rotation, we recommend you introduce small degrees of change very gradually to allow the tissues and bones of your feet, legs, and hips time to adjust. We strongly recommend you do this in combination with other postural principles taught in 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, and our Gokhale Method® in-person Foundations and Pop-up courses, and our online Elements course. 

If you would like guidance on any aspect of your posture, including how best to use your feet, consider scheduling an Initial Consultation, online or in person, with a Gokhale Method teacher.
I’ll also be giving a free online workshop on Thursday September 15, 4:00pm PT, Fix your feet with the Gokhale Method. You can sign up here. I look forward to seeing you there.

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