FREE THE FEET!
Anyone who has worked with me personally will have probably been exposed to my ‘toe shoes’ at some point in time. These shoes are met with curiosity and fascination, and often polarized opinions. People tend to love them or hate them! I have been told that they look like gorilla feet, that it looks like I’m not wearing shoes at all, or conversely people ask where I got them so that they can go buy their own pair! Regardless of opinion, they never fail to be a conversation starter and always provide a good opportunity to delve into the topic of the feet.
I love to wear them because they make me feel agile and light on my feet, like a dancer. They also give me a feeling of freedom, similar to the feeling of walking barefoot on the sand or grass. When I wear them, I know that I am giving my feet the love and attention they deserve to develop into two strong, healthy and stable foundations.
When you think about the feet, they’re pretty important structures. They provide the initial point of contact between the ground and the rest of the body - they are the bases of our support. Any dysfunction at the level of the feet gets transmitted up the kinetic chain - to the knees, hips, back, sometimes even all the way to the shoulders and neck! For example, pronated ankles (collapsing inwards towards the mid-line of the body) pull the knees out of alignment, internally rotating the thigh bone, causing the pelvis to tip forward, increasing the arch in the back… And so on. We call this the ‘bottom up’ approach (the ‘top down’ approach is also important, but that’s a topic for another day).
Healthy feet are important for the alignment of the skeleton above it. We have 33 joints in each feet, and these joints are there to allow for mobility and appropriate shock absorption. There are also a series of muscular arches that run along the length and width of the feet, which are important for absorbing impact forces and maintaining the structural integrity of the feet when we bear a load on them, i.e. during standing, walking, running, and lifting weights.
Many shoes these days have in-built arch supports which are designed to fit in the natural curve of the feet and help provide support, restricting the normal movement of the joints in the feet. The muscles in the feet which would normally be required to do this, see this as an opportunity to take a holiday. They sit back and let the shoes do the work. They get lazy. Imagine all your little feet muscles putting their own little feet up on the ottoman, grabbing a beer and switching on the T.V. Doesn’t make for a very effective team of muscles does it? These muscles shrink / atrophy, and the joints in the feet become locked up and stiff.
The strength and mobility of the toes are also important for our feet function. Wearing shoes basically puts our toes into a little container. They are squashed up together at the front, and the ability of the big toe to aid in the propulsion movement during walking is restricted. Walking barefoot allows us to splay the toes wider and broaden the width of our contact surface on the ground, as well as forcing the toes to really bend and push off with each step we take. You will see the long term consequences of footwear on some peoples feet. Toes that are squashed up close to each other or even curled up slightly, bunions on the side of the big toe from these squashed up toes. Do you think our cavemen ancestors would have scrunched up toes, or nice wide, strong feet with toes that splay wide and can interact with the ground strongly?
Our feet also contain many many tiny sensory receptors, which take in information relating to the pressure on the soles of our feet and different textures on the ground. These receptors help us to differentiate between walking on carpet, sand, grass, concrete, stones, wet and slippery surfaces … These different surfaces require slight differences in the way that we walk (for example you would walk more softly on concrete than you would on carpet, and you would walk more carefully over wet vinyl than you would over grass). Shoes act as great big blindfolds for the feet - they negate the sensory input from the ground. This lack of sensory info means that the brain doesn’t really know what’s going on down there. It loses the ability to fine tune the way that the muscles in our lower leg and feet respond to the impact loads on our body. Again, the muscles ‘take a holiday’ and start to rely on our shoes to do the job that they should be doing themselves.
Once again, this can start a cascade of effects further up the kinetic chain. Dysfunctional feet result in stiff feet as well as stiffness upstream, as the body creates stiffness in order to try and achieve stability. The more rigid the feet, the more rigid the body. The paradox is that our feet must be able to achieve both a rigid lever, as well as achieving malleability, flexibility, and adaptability.
In summary - most modern shoes do no encourage strong and functional feet! So free the feet, I say. Take off those shoes and spend time barefoot, walking over different surfaces and textures. Wake up those lazy foot muscles again and give the sensory receptors something to do.
And if you’re super committed to strong feet (as I am) take a look for a pair of gorilla shoes of your own ;) (mine are called ‘Vibram Five Fingers’ )
Please note: If you use insoles / podiatrist prescribed arch supports or suffer from chronic pain, I recommend that you ease into your ‘barefoot time’ gradually. You may need to allow time for the muscles to develop the strength to support holding these positions without the external aid.