Strengthen your feet

If you’re reading this tip – you’re lucky. I would consider it one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned as triathletes.

As promised in the last tip about avoiding orthotics, here’s some great ideas to get you going on strengthening your feet. Having strong feet will help eliminate the need to throw corrective support into your shoes, and help you get rid of those lingering injuries. Essentially, what you’re doing with orthotics, is making up for something that’s missing (or wrongly thought to be missing) in your basic foot structure. Pronation or is not necessarily a bad thing, it is your body’s way of cushioning some of the blow from the impact of a run stride. You simply have to have strong feet and ankles to keep from getting injured. A great way to see this is to walk bare foot. If you’re pronating while walking bare foot – why try to correct it with supportive insoles? If anything, orthotics or supportive insoles are a band-aid. They’ll help the problem for a while, but then that part of your body will get even weaker and further problems will arise. We’ve personally had issues with this. We have high arches and assumed we needed some sort of support underneath. What this did was make them weak from under-use (an arch after all is a structure that gets stronger when pressed on from above), and we both developed some annoying pains in our heels and toes. Thankfully we caught it quickly and didn’t simply upgrade to the next most supportive insole.

If you look back into the 70′s when marathons were taking off and most of North America was running WAAAAAYYYY faster than they are now – then you look at the injury rate and the shoes they were wearing – you’ll bring up some puzzling questions. Plantar Fasciitis: quite possibly non-existent until the advent of the well supported, well cushioned running shoe. NOT TO SAY supportive and cushioned shoes are bad, they have their place. Stress fractures are bad. We’ve simply forgotten how to keep our feet strong in today’s ‘latest and greatest do-dad’ shoe market. The well supportive shoe also brings up issues of poor run stride. I.e. They allow you to run with poor form because you’re no longer concerned about how hard you hit the ground with each stride.

Anyway, people have written books on that topic and I think you hopefully get the point. So, how to strengthen you feet.

#1. Bare foot running. I first heard about someone bare foot running while reading Jasper Blake’s blog a few years ago. At the time I dismissed it as something funny, or something he simply did for the pure joy of it. Finally, this year we were introduced us to the real benefits – it is still fun, however. Key thing to remember is to start slow and short. 5-15 minutes at the most, a couple times per week at the end of a normal workout or on a recovery day. Use proper run form (perhaps our view of proper run form will come up in a future tip). You can slowly increase the frequency, but really the volume doesn’t ever need to get excessive. Soon enough you’ll find you can run without orthotics or supportive insoles and start to done some racing flats (very light running shoes with not much cushion). We do stress, however, that it takes time and you have to ease into it. You also have to pay attention to run stride, but, simply running (very slow jogging, actually) bare foot will more than likely help with that issue. You will not be able to land on your heel without that protective cushion helping you along. Head out on soft surfaces; grass without debris, a rubber track, or grab yourself a pair of Aquasocks so you can jog on some slightly rougher terrain but still have freedom of movement for your toes.

#2. Towel pulls – for lack of a better name. Quite simply, lay down a towel on the floor, stand on the end, clench your toes and pull the towel towards your heel.

#3. Barefoot tiptoe raises. Like they sound. Lifting your heels to stand on your tiptoes and back down. Eyes closed is good for balance. Focus on your feet muscles.

#4. Dexterous toes. Grab things with your toes. Try to pick them up. Practice moving you toes indepentendly of one another.

Soon enough your feet will be stronger and more resilient, allowing you train longer and harder with less risk of injury.