One of the underrated body parts to be trained is the foot, though, it is the important part of our body. Imagine you have a gorgeous car with top notch engine, but the tire is poor. Doesn’t really matter how good of the driver you are it won’t work. Same thing happens with a foot. Huge muscles with single digit percent of body fat but if the foot is in poor condition, your daily activity will be suffering. And yes, improving your feet health and strength does not stand out as much as improving your squat, bench, pull up and so on. However, without decent feet condition, those exercise performance can suffer.
Feet Trivia
Here are some fun facts about the foot. Forefoot, or toe area, gets most injury or deform such as bunion and hammer toes, primarily because it takes pressure of 8 times the body weight. Which means, even if you weigh 100lb, about 800lb pressure is applied to the forefoot at each step. Achilles tendon experience pressure of 4 times the body weight when walking and that number doubles when running.
So imagine what your feet has to go through when you are wearing shoes that are small or tight around toe box. It does restrict how your toes can function to properly distribute the load.
Our foot goes through so much work during the day than we imagine but we pay least amount of attention to them compared with arm, chest, abs and so on.
Basic Anatomy of the Foot
Mechanism of foot is very complicated. This is also a reason for training and treatment after the injury is somewhat vague and incomplete. Foot has 26 bones and 33 joints. When talking about the foot, we divide it into three locations, forefoot, midfoot, and rearfoot.
Rearfoot consists of calcaneus, or heel bone, and talus which is the bone that connects with shin bones tibia and fibula.
Interesting thing is 100lb female has larger calcaneus than 350lb gorilla. Calcaneus is designed to absorb shock and does 2 times better shock absorber than material that is used in orthotics. Talus has no muscle attachment which means it is connected only with ligaments.
Midfoot consists of navicular, cuboid, and cuneiform bones. Navicular bone is the highest medial arch in the midfoot. Forefoot, as mentioned earlier, Forefoot, gets most injury, primarily because it takes pressure of 8 times the body weight.
In a foot, there are 29 muscles with 10 extrinsic muscles, which means originate outside of the foot and cross the ankle joint to act on the foot. 19 muscles are intrinsic muscles, which means muscles located within the foot.
Some of the extrinsic muscles are gastrocnemius, soleus, and anterior tibialis. Gastrocnemius and soleus are also known as calf muscle which are responsible for flexion at the knee joints and plantar flexion of the foot. Together they form an important tendon called Achilles tendon. Anterior tibialis is a muscle locate along the tibia and responsible for dorsi flexion or pointing the foot towards the body. There are muscles that does not get recognized that are important in both dorsi flexion and plantar flexion originate around the tibia or shin area and insert to your toes.
Intrinsic muscles are divided into two groups, plantar and dorsal group. Plantar group has muscles to flex the toes and dorsal group has muscles to extend the toes.
Movement of the Foot
Foot has several movement patterns. There is dorsiflexion of the foot where foot is flexed towards the body. Plantarflexion of the foot is where foot is flexed towards the floor. Take walking for example. When you heel strike, while walking, your foot is in dorsiflexion and as the foot flat out on the floor it is in plantar flexion.
There are inversion and eversion of the foot. Inversion is where turning the arch portion of the foot inward and eversion is turning the arch portion of the foot outward.
Then there are adduction and abduction of the toes. Adduction of the toes will be bringing the toes close in. Abduction will be spreading of the toes. Then there is flexion and extension of the toes.
All these movements are important for the gait and impact absorption and distributing the load. For example, if the dorsiflexion is not working because of the anterior tibialis is weak, then you may have higher chance to trip/fall. This is because when planting the foot, toes will be pointing down contacting the floor first. If there is a forefoot issues such as bunion, hammer toe, or skin conditions such as wart, you may not be able to apply pressure to your forefoot and all of the load goes to your heal. Do you remember how much load the forefoot experience while walking?
Lack of strength in the foot has strong correlation with fall risk at any age. This is critical for those who has weak feet and playing sports. Orthotic insole may help but why not train your foot to maximize your potential?
Feet and Ankle Problems Lead to Other Issues
When you have a feet or ankle problem, you will have other issues such as knee and hip problem.
When there is a anterior tibialis weakness or tightness, not only you will have a foot problem where you cannot dorsiflex (toes pointing up), however, knee flexion will also get compromised. When the knees travel forward, dorsiflexion in the ankle is necessary. Great example is most people have no knee issue walking up the hill or up the stairs but experience knee pain when walking down hill or down stairs. This is because down hill or down stair gait pattern requires dorsiflexion in the rear foot. When squatting, dorsiflexion has to be there or the squat will look like hinge exercise.
When there is a calf tightness or weakness, you will have challenge with plantarflexion or push off when you walk or run. Calf muscles, especially gastrocnemius, crossover at the back of the knee. Therefore, it becomes difficult to straighten out the knee. Because knee is not fully accessible, all of the load will go into hips and thighs.
Let's go back to the gait. Because the plantarflexion or push off while walking is weak, the heel strike become stronger and push off may only happen at the ball of the foot. This may sound not bad but ball of the foot is just a part of the forefoot and for proper push off, you want all of the toes to participate so that 8 times the body weight pressure can be evenly distributed. Also, heavier the heel strike, the more stress will be placed on hamstring. Overtime, hamstring will be overused and become tighter and may tug on pelvis which may interferes with lower back health.
Can you imagine type of issues they may have when someone has sitting job with tight calf because of poor footwear? Tight hip flexor with tight calf and hamstring. This will lead to lower back pain, knee pain and perhaps foot or feet problem. What if this person is overweight?
Cause of Foot Problems
Why do we get these foot problems? Genetics does play some role for how your feet is structured. However, 2 of the major causes are we spend less time in bare feet and poor selection of the shoes.
Walking barefoot force us to use our entire feet more effectively and able to expose to actual loading from your body weight, along with improving sensitivity of the foot by walking on different surfaces. Even if you feel uncomfortable at first, spend more time in barefoot, at least when you are at home. Barefoot means no shoes, no socks. While you are walking barefoot, feel your toes pressing the floor, feel the heel making contact with the floor as you walk, and see if you can feel texture of the floor.
Narrow toe space restrict the movement in your toes. When selecting shoes, as much as possible find the shoes that gives you freedom in your toes. I do realize that in certain occasions, you may need to wear tighter shoes. Shoes that has higher heel such as majority of exercise shoes, high heel and other dress shoes, put more stress over calf muscles and loading on your forefoot. Especially high heel tend to have narrow toe box as well, which will restrict the foot function.
Since I play soccer, due to the nature of the sports, the soccer shoes are designed to have narrow toe box and slightly higher heel for easier sprinting. Certain brand does give me more toe space so I tend to purchase those than those that are too narrow. However, outside of soccer game or practice, I'm either barefoot, flat sandals, or shoes that has less heel elevation with wider toe box. Term you should look for when you are purchasing shoes are "zero drop" and "wide toe box". Select daily shoes according to how your feet feel comfortably and not by popularity of the brand.
Kota Shimada
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