Simple Steps to Foot Pain Relief. Katy Bowman
become the encasing of the foot, usually in materials more rigid than the feet themselves. In other words, what da Vinci called “a masterpiece of engineering,” a machine whose refined design evolved over millennia, is now stuck in one of your shoes. When an engineer begins making repairs or modifications to any machine—whether made of metal or organic tissue—the engineer has to ask the question: What else might this change affect?
A biomechanist looking at the mechanics of the human body will ask a similar question: For all of the benefit that protective footwear may bring, what else might it affect?
Consider all of the bones and muscles that make up and control your hands and fingers, and how many wonderfully unique ways you can move them. The ability to type, play the piano, conduct surgeries on microscopic tissue, and even button your shirt are all a result of learning how to use the muscles in your hands, and keeping them limber through regular use. Now imagine that when you were two years old, someone placed stiff, tight, leather mittens over your hands, lumping all of the bones together, every day, from morning to night. Your body would adapt to the situation, learning how to use the muscles of the forearms and the joints of the wrist to a greater extent. You would learn to use the outside edge of your hand as one “finger” and train the digits to all work as a single body part. This way of using your hands would be completely normal to you, as that is the way it would always have been.
Now ponder this: the anatomy of your feet indicates the potential for them to be about as dexterous as your hands. However, the act of wearing modern footwear every day has created a mitten-hand situation in your feet—and you didn’t even know it. We have weak, underdeveloped muscles within the foot and have placed large loads on the muscles of the lower leg, on the joints in the foot, and on passive tissues (those that cannot adapt strength) like the fascial systems and ligaments of the foot.
The good news is, by learning a bit more about your foot-machines, you can restore a lot of lost function and start the repair process right away. As long as your feet contain living tissue, they can change, grow, and improve, no matter what they’ve been doing (or not doing) up to this point.
Anatomy Lesson One: Your toes are separate structures from your feet for a reason.
When we think of the feet, we typically think of everything from the ankle down. Lumping this whole area together in our minds has the end result of lumping all the tissues together in our using patterns (or is it vice versa?). Each toe, just like each finger, has its own set of pulleys that allows it to function independently. While you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a modern activity that requires us to use our toes individually, using all of our parts serves a larger purpose. Every muscle has its own nerve supply that, when activated, keeps that local area of the body well nourished. While writing with our toes is not required for daily living (thank goodness—my penmanship is bad enough as it is!), being able to generate these movements is required to keep these parts of your body vital.
Anatomy Lesson Two: Your toes should be able to move separately from your feet.
Many people, especially those with chronic foot issues, cannot lift their toes without lifting their foot. Go ahead and try this. Stand up (it’s okay, you can take the book with you), kick your shoes off, and see if you can lift just your toes without taking the entire foot with them. If you don’t get it right away, try backing your hips up so your weight is over your heels, and keep practicing. You’ll be surprised how quickly your toes may go from “zero” to “some movement” with a little practice.
Anatomy Lesson Three: Your toes should be able to move separately from each other.
Imagine all of the unique motions you can create with your fingers, lifting them one or two at a time, playing a piano, or even typing. We have the same potential in our feet as we do our hands, but we have casted these muscle groups via footwear, often for our entire lives, and so we have been left with stiff, weak, atrophied, and degenerating tissues in the feet. It’s no wonder our feet hurt! If you had fun with the last exercise, you’re going to love this one. Try lifting your toes individually, without bringing along the rest of the gang. I suggest starting with your big toe (see page 108 for an illustration of this motion).
Don’t worry if you can’t do it yet. You will learn eventually, with practice. In fact, many people who are without arms or hands train their feet to complete daily tasks—from diapering a baby, to writing, to playing the piano. We come with the necessary pulleys, levers, and electrical equipment needed for these movements—we’re simply out of practice using them.
Anatomy Lesson Four: The front half of your foot should move separately from the back half.
Now that I’ve told you your toes are separate structures, keep in mind that the foot is not just one giant, fixed bone, but is made up of 26 bones and 33 joints. The primary reason our body even has joints is to allow for fluid movement. Could you imagine how hard it would be to use your arms or legs if your elbows or knees were missing? Your movements would be extremely rigid and stiff. The same goes for your foot: the less you use the many small joints within your foot by moving it in unique and novel ways, the less fluid control you have over stabilizing your body’s weight—also known as balance.
Anatomy Lesson Five: There is no part in your foot that is shaped like an arch.
If you cut open the perfectly formed and healthiest foot, you would not be able to find an arch-like structure. Rather, the arch is a shape created by what the muscles and bones are doing. Wondering what happened to the arch of your foot? Think about arching your eyebrow. The work that goes in to lifting your eyebrow is similar to the muscular work that goes into drawing up the mid-foot. Only instead of using the muscles on your face, you’d need to use muscles in the foot, shin, and thigh. Said another way, if you want to restore the arch in your foot (or reduce an overly high arch in the foot), it’s most helpful to think of the arch of the foot as an action, and not a part.
If you feel your high or low arches are giving you problems, you’ll need to address both the strength and the flexibility of your feet. Whether your arches are completely missing, or high and stiff, the recommendation is the same: condition your feet with the Fit Feet exercises shown later in this book to develop strength and mobility in the right places for your body.
FOOT MUSCLES
Every muscle comes with its very own nerve supply. When you underuse muscles in the body, the communication between those nerves and muscles is less, resulting in a decrease in the health of both tissues. The inverse is also true: increasing the use of a muscle can improve the health of both that muscle and its nerve by increasing local circulation. Increased circulation means more oxygen-rich blood (tissue “food”) being delivered to an area and also a simultaneous removal of cellular waste products—waste that can otherwise accumulate and accelerate tissue breakdown.
The nerves that are responsible for moving the foot muscles originate from the lower parts of your spinal column. Traveling from your spine all the way to your feet, these nerves are some of the longest in your entire body.
The muscles of the feet can be placed into two groups: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic foot muscles are those with one end residing within the foot, and the other end residing somewhere outside of the foot. The muscles of your calves are examples of extrinsic foot muscles. Running between the feet and lower leg, these muscles move the foot around relative to the lower leg, but can’t move the foot relative to itself.
Intrinsic muscles are those muscles that are contained completely within the foot. These muscles are much smaller, and are responsible for tiny, controlled movements of the many bones in the toes and feet. An example of an intrinsic foot muscle would be the abductor digiti minimi, the muscle that moves the little toe out and away from the rest of the foot. Ever heard of it? I didn’t think so.
If we think back to the example of covering our hands with leather mittens, it would be the intrinsic muscles that would become underdeveloped due to lack of fine movements. It would be the extrinsic muscles working to compensate. In a chronically shod foot, the extrinsic muscles work more than they should and the intrinsic muscles work less than they should. Ideally, the work between the two should be more balanced, with the intrinsic muscles functioning in coordination with the extrinsic