Billions of dollars a year are spent on foot surgeries, orthotics, shoes, and various forms of treatment for foot pain, yet how the entire body moves is seldom assessed or addressed.
Alignment is less about perfect posture in still positions and more about how force, tension, and stress are distributed throughout your body when you move.
Fig A. When our bones are aligned, our body can direct force smoothly through the soft tissue. As the heel hits the ground, force moves forward over the arch then off the front of the foot as our weight is propelled forward.
This progression of force is mechanically efficient and has the lowest impact on the body.
Fig B. When our bones are misaligned, the progression of tension is clunky, inefficient, and damaging to the soft tissue. Weight and tension are not evenly distributed causing some areas to break down faster then others.
In this example, the hip is externally rotated causing the knee and foot to also point outward.
With a rotated hip, each step forces the outer heel to strike the ground first causing the arch to immediately collapse, and the “roll-off” happens almost entirely at the big toe joint compromising the structural integrity of the entire foot and greatly increasing the risk of injury.
A shoe insert or surgery alone isn’t going to fix that – it might help reduce the clunky force progression temporarily, but it tends to be a band-aide at best if the hip is never addressed.
I’ve never helped someone with debilitating foot pain by giving just foot exercises. Sure there can be some exercises to help the foot move better, but the knees, hips, pelvis, and shoulders must be addressed to fully resolve how that foot lands and pushes off with each step.
If you are interested in taking a look at what your entire body is doing to better understand why you are feeling and moving the way you are, I recommend you start off with my Pain Assessment Toolkit.
The information found in The Pain Assessment Toolkit will give you an entirely new perspective with your body which can save you from wasting years just chasing symptoms.
Click here to take a look at your alignment and how your entire body moves.