Are My Flat Feet The Cause Of My Pain?
Have you been told that your flat feet are the root cause of all your problems? Did you get prescribed custom orthotics and were sent on your way but you’ve still got pain in different areas of your body? We know, it’s beyond frustrating.
Let’s talk about orthotics for a minute. In our experience, they’re not a long-term solution. Why? It stops your foot from going into it’s natural rhythm creating stiffness, not proper movement.
The foot must be able to flatten and arch, and it needs to be able to do that over and over again as you walk and/or run. Your foot has a full range of motion, just like your arm does.
Let us help you see this more clearly..think about if your arm was having pain and so you put it in a cast. Do you keep the cast on forever? Well no because that doesn’t make sense. You can understand how that will cause issues somewhere else after some time of your arm being stuck in a cast. Same can be said for your foot relying on orthotics.
Orthotics are like casts for your foot, keeping them in the same position, not allowing them to move through their full range of motion. This results in stiff and rigid feet leading to pain in different areas of your body.
Okay, I’m kind of getting it, but what do I do instead?
Our approach focuses on making your foot go even flatter. This indeed gets you a higher arch. We know how counterintuitive that sounds so don’t leave us yet, let us explain.
Every muscle in your body is like a rubber band. It is suspended by two ends called bones. Now, if you want that rubber band to produce force you have to pull it apart. So in the case of muscles, you will want to pull the two bones apart from each other where your arch muscle attaches and in real life this looks like a flat foot position.
So, why would that give me a higher arch? This is where it gets interesting. Our body comes with a safety mechanism where if you stretch a muscle far enough, the nervous system will tell that muscle to contract automatically so you don’t end up hurting yourself. Pretty neat, right?
Take Advantage of The Brain’s Safety Mechanism
Let’s use this safety mechanism to trick your brain into working your arch. Simply, all we need to do is give your arch a massive stretch.
In order to effectively stretch the arch, you need to be standing. You will need to shift your bodyweight on top of your foot and allow all those bones in your foot to separate from each other. This is where I should stop writing and have you watch the video below.
Can’t feel anything? Try this one instead!
Did you notice that when you can properly get into different foot shapes, the position of your other joints started to change? Knee, hips, spine, shoulder blade, and even neck? That is because everything is connected. If you can change how your foot interacts with the ground, you can create changes in other areas of your body. It is not uncommon for our clients to get relief from hip pain and back pain by addressing issues at the foot level. We personally use these types of exercises a lot to help our clients overcome issues that have been going on for 5, 10, 20 years….