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My feet are amazing! But how should I stand and why does this matter?

 Each of your feet are amazing, I know that I did not appreciate my feet until I had a accident and one of my feet stopped working as well as it used to.  My extreme sport of choice was piggy in the middle with my children on the beach, when I kick a stone.  This has continued to impact my foot health for over 18 months (well I'm still recovering).  

Each of your feet are made up of 26 bones, 30 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. Your feet are the most amazing mobile weight bearing structures around.  When anatomists write about the foot, they often refer to the "bony architecture" of the foot. Now start to think about the structure of your foot as "bony architecture" and you can start understanding how you foot is similar to a vaulted church ceiling. Lots of individual bones precisely placed to fit together in an amazing arched structure.  What is incredible about the foot is that there are three arches at work.


You have the arch that you are probably familiar with on the inside (medial) of your foot, it runs from the ball of the foot behind the big toe to the heal, feel it now on your body.  You also have a smaller arch on the outside (lateral) of your foot it runs behind the ball of the foot at the little toe to the heal.  Finally you have an arch that runs from the lateral arch across the underneath of your foot to the medial arch called the transverse arch.  Be aware that when feeling this arch on your foot it might tickle. 

Now stand up with you feet hip width apart and knees soft (not locked back).  First notice if your feet are parallel.  If they are not, try to correct them.  Now think about how the weight of your body is transferring through your feet.  Are you standing into your heals or onto the balls of your feet.  Is more of you body weight on the outside (lateral) or inside (medial) edge of your feet. You might like to gently rock on you feet to feel the weight of you body move from front to back or side to side and come to a stop in the middle. Try to settle your weight through the center of your three foot arches.  How does this feel?  Do you feel natural in this position? 

Your journey to strengthening your feet starts by getting to know them and then thinking about how the position of your feet changes the position of your legs and then your pelvis, back, shoulders and neck.  Your foot position can give clues to muscle weakness within you body.  Everyone's body is a spectacular collection of connections and in Pilates we work the body from a neutral position and this includes you feet.  Next time you work out spend an extra few seconds paying attention to you foot position.

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Location: Bristol, UK

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