Toe spreaders

Your feet are a very important but generally neglected part of your body. We may get leg massages but often don’t do a thing to loosen up our feet. Achy heels in the morning can be the initial signs of plantar fasciitis, and you want to do all that you can to avoid that.

First start by walking around in bare feet as much as you can to get all those feet muscles working. Wiggle your toes around while you are eating breakfast, try to move your pinkie toes independently.  Roll the underside of your feet out on a golf ball or a full water bottle that has been frozen.

An excellent thing to do after your runs, while your are stretching, is to use toe spreaders (those things that women use to paint their toenails) to separate your toes and help stretch your feet.  They feel really odd and rather uncomfortable at first, but they can really help loosen up your whole posterior chain (the fascia that run from the underside of your feet to the top of your head).  One exercise is to stand with the toe spreaders on and, with your heels and big toe still on the ground, try to raise your big toe knuckle as high as you can, repeat.

A great thing for recovery in general is to get your legs up in the air. If you do this with toe spreaders on (toes pulled towards your head), your butt as close to the wall as it can go to get a comfortable hamstring stretch, your back neutral and your arms out above your head with wrists cocked (palms up, fingers pointed away from your body) this will loosen you up nicely – from your head to your spread toes.