Can Pilates really help weak feet and ankles?

 Yes........I should explain why. 

As you already know from last weeks post you have lots of perfectly places bones in your foot supporting the weight from your body in three fabulous arches and some other bony structures. These bones are held in place by ligaments, fascia, tendons and muscles.  

Foot exercises are really important to the health of you feet, you should not exclude your feet and ankles from your exercise plan.  Strengthening the muscles that run from the top of your calf and then under you foot where they fan out will improve the mobility of your foot and support the planter fascia (a strong layer of fibrous tissue beneath the skin on the sole of the foot).  

In Pilates you might notice that rising up onto your tip toes and controlling your decent is a regular feature to lessons.  This is taught as it works 8 lower limb muscles which all support the ankle and have foot operation responsibilities.  Next time you go onto tip toes, really take the time to think: 

• Can I slow this movement down?
• Am I rolling my feet to the edge?  Can I keep the foot parallel with the ground? 
• As I descend, can I stretch the bottom of my feet out? 
• Can I stretch my toes away from my foot?  We don't really want claw toes. 

Do you know how much movement you have in you ankle?  Try now, sit down with you legs stretched out on the floor in front of you.  Imagine you legs have been set into a plaster cast and you can not move them, even 1mm.  Now try to rotate your foot at the ankle away from your body (pronate) and then rotate the foot towards the middle of you body (supinate).  When I was first asked to do this as part of my foot rehabilitation I was amazed at how hard it was to keep my lower limb still whist trying to get any movement in my ankle.  Have a go and start strengthening your ankle and foot ligaments and tendons.  Remember don't do anything that causes you pain.