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.

Comments

When I stretch my hip flexor muscles I feel it in the front of my thighs. Is this right?

The short answer is yes! In my first post I talked about the movement of hip flexion and listed the hip flexors. We have already covered the iliopsoas the main flexor of the hip. Today I am going to talk about the rectus femoris muscle which also assist with hip flexion. The rectus femoris is the large muscles at the front of your upper thigh. If you sit down with a tray on your lap, the tray would be resting on your rectus femoris. It is part of the quadriceps, four muscles on the front of the leg between the pelvis and the knee. Rectus femoris is the only quadricep that reaches over the hip joint as it originates on the front of the pelvis. In class I often reference your ASIS ( A nterior S uperior I lliac S pine), you have two and they are the nobly bones you can feel through your skin at the front of your pelvis. Well you also have two AIIS ( A nterior I nferior I lliac S pine) this is another nobly part of the pelvic bon...

Tight hip flexors from sitting at my computer all day! How to release this feeling at home.

At home there are a number of ways to release tight hip flexors. Think about the main hip flexor the Iliopsoas for a moment. It originates in the lumbar spine attaching to the vertebra at the bottom of your back, it then attaches to the inside of the pelvis (illiac crest the bony bit you feel at your waist) and then passes through the pelvis and connects to a nobly bit of the leg bone your can't feel at the top of your inner thigh (the lesser trochanter of the femur). Its helped by some other muscles, but to keep it simple we are going to only think about the Iliopsoas. Now think about being sat down, The front of your body is scrunched up. Your legs are brought closer to your lumbar spine (the bottom of your back) and the Iliopsoas is contracted or squashed in size. Now think about being sat for 3 hours. Upon standing up you might feel tightness along the front of your legs/pelvis. This tightness is from you hip flexors. Humans are ...

What is my rotator cuff?

We all have two rotator cuffs which are very important to our shoulder operation, one inside each shoulder. Your rotator cuff is made of four muscles that provide joint security (I love this term, a tiny little police force living in your shoulder making sure that the glenohumeral (shoulder) joint remains functioning). Why does your shoulder need a police force? Well the ball and socket joint of the shoulder is a bit rubbish (and also very good *). It is not like a caravan and car ball and socket joint where you have a deep strong connection (a bit like the hip). It is more like a scallop shell and a stick with a bulbus end. It fits ok, but really needs lots of tape and string to keep it together. Your rotator cuff muscles are the police, the tape and the string that hold this amazing joint together. The next part is only for reading if you are super interested in the names and actions of the muscles. The four muscles of ...

Katie Leaver Pilates

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