Keep reading for 5 easy tips that you can do mindlessly which will completely transform your feet in one session…Totally kidding. It doesn’t really work like that, as you probably know. The journey to better feet is a marathon, not a sprint.
“Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.“
Martha Graham
Today we are talking about the FEET. The crown jewel of all dancers. I would also go so far to say they are pretty important if you enjoy moving around and standing up. Just saying.
Instead of looking at the feet through the scope of a dancer, we are going to look at the journey to better feet more holistically, through the scope of a human.
Through this scope, our “dancer feet” will also improve. Imagine that.
All of us have seen the common theraband exercises and other “dance-y” foot exercises. Those types of exercises are good for training specifically for demands of dance. But aren’t everything…
For me and maybe you too- you know the exercises to “do” and you don’t do them regularly. Why is this? I don’t necessarily think being lazy or unmotivated is the reason. I think these exercises are just not addressing the main problems and you know it. They don’t feel relevant and they don’t feel like they are worth doing.
Because there is a more general problem.
How would you like a full foot routine that strengthens, stretches, and proprioceptively enhances your feet? You don’t have to really think about it, and you don’t have to do anything differently than you normally do, yet your feet will be stronger and more supple than ever. Ok here we go- get your notes ready:
Step 1: Take off your shoes.
Step 2: The end.
Before the ‘modern’ invention of shoes, people walked around barefoot. Their feet were adaptable and strong. Think about the plethora of surfaces that their feet covered. Rocks, grass, dirt, snow, sand.
Nowadays, we wear shoes. AKA “sensory deprivation chambers” (Dr. Phillip Beach), “leather coffins” (Tom Meyers) or “bodicelike containers” (Eric Franklin).
If your feet are weak and unadaptable in everyday life because they have grown used to shoes, then pointing/flexing in a theraband for a couple minutes before class is not going to help your foot problem. We are going to explore one of the root causes of weak feet/ankles today- the suffocating-straight-jackets of the feet! (Kali Johnson) What? I wanted to have a cool shoe-slamming name too.
So kick off your shoes and let’s begin our feet journey!
Stop 1: The feet are sensory organs.
The bottom of the foot is a sensory RICH area, when you go barefoot, your brain is intensely interested in all of the sensations it is receiving. Our soles have 200,000 nerve endings, which send info straight to the brain in constant communication. When we are wearing shoes, or only walking on flat surfaces all day, we don’t get as much sensation, so those nerve endings basically go into hibernation, because of the “use it or lose it” principle that the brain sticks to.
If you are rehearsing a dance everyday, your brain map will think “yeah this is important we will keep this info” and save all of the sensations it feels in order to do it better. As soon as you perform the final show and stop rehearsing, your brain is like “we can throw this info in the deep memories, gotta make room for new!
Super efficient. Gotta love it.
Being barefoot as much as possible awakens the sensation of the feet and keeps that dialogue going between the feet and the brain.
Stop 2: The feet are adaptable domes.
A common advice you hear is that you need to make sure you have highly supportive shoes to “protect” your feet. But,
“Arch support, motion control and stability mechanisms in shoes inhibit natural pronation, part of our shock absorbing system, and weaken arches.”
Vivobarefoot
The “arches” of the foot are a super hot topic in dance, because all dancers want to have the desired “banana foot”. There is a lot of debate and ambiguity around the arches, but what everyone does seem to agree on is the idea of the foot being “springy” and communicating with the ground dynamically with plenty of pliability and recoil.
With every step we take, the feet need to be able to accept and distribute the force from the ground up our entire structures. They also need to be strong and supportive in order to propel us through space.
This is not the same as either having “high arches” or “flat feet”. Someone with high arches actually has a very rigid foot structure, and someone with flat feet tends to need more strength.
So, thinking of arches in a more theoretical way, we want the foot to be an active dome. One of the key arches is the transverse arch, or the arch across the width of the foot.
In order to turn this arch “on” we need to have a mobilized forefoot.
The problem is the top ⅓ of the foot is usually immobilized because of the confining nature of most shoes, which is not good for anyone who wants to get up into a relevé. Watch my tutorial below in order to free up the forefoot:
Think about it like this, the feet adapt to whatever they are put in. Cushiony/soft shoes= rigid feet. Minimal/barefoot shoes= supple feet. My husband and I were researching this and came across Vivobarefoot shoes. The shoes are wide in the toes and mimic the feeling of being barefoot, so they don’t have a lot of cushiony support. We both got a pair, and love them.
It’s funny the number one question I get asked about them is “is there any support?” Which the answer is no, but now my feet are strong enough to support themselves. Instead of getting “better” shoes, we got better feet.
This makes way more sense to me in relation to my sport, because my habits in my everyday life help achieve my goals of getting stronger feet, not going against my goals so I am in “dance training mode” and then “normal human mode”. It’s a holistic process of betterment, and it makes training the feet make way more sense to me.
Stop 3: The feet are muscular structures
Another common thing you hear is “strengthen the intrinsic muscles of the feet”. Very vague. What does that even mean? Do people that are saying this know what they are talking about?
So just so we are on the same page here, there are intrinsic muscles and extrinsic muscles in our feet. We have 12 extrinsic muscles that lie outside the foot but affect the foot. You have probably heard of a lot of the extrinsic muscles- the gastrocnemius & soleus (calves), fibularis longus, tibialis anterior etc. They all are connected at some place in the lower leg and cross into the foot.
Our 12 intrinsic muscles are located completely within the foot. They are divided into 4 layers, the deepest of these layers being between our metatarsal bones. The purpose of the intrinsics are to move the toes, enhance extrinsic muscles, maintain arches, and push off the toes from the ground. If the intrinsic muscles are inactive, the toes will be curled, and you won’t have an effective push-off in walking, or in jumps.
What do you do to strengthen the intrinsic muscles?
Instead of trying to “put on” a workout, let your feet workout in the way they will adapt to the best- walking barefoot!
A common one you see for strengthening the intrinsics is to do the towel scrunching exercise. I think this is a great exercise, but possibly is not doing anything to the intrinsics. If you are curling your toes to get the towel to scrunch under you are using an extrinsic muscle- your flexor hallicus longus and flexor digitorum longus, or your toe flexors- to claw the towel underneath. This is actually not good because with overactive toe flexors, comes gripping with the toes in relevé, and toes that curl under in a tendu. If you are doing this exercise try to keep the toes long and dome the undersides of the foot off the ground. Try imagining there is a fountain underneath the bottom of your foot lifting up your foot from the bottom.
Stop 4: The feet are balancing transmissions.
Everyone has heard that your sensory system helps you balance. Notably your eyes and inner ears. If you haven’t heard this try balancing with your eyes closed. Hard stuff. We especially depend on our vision for balance. But maybe we are over-dependent on our vision and need to share the love! (Especially from staring at screens all day.) We can’t leave out the most important sensory organ that does the most for our balance- the feet! With their gi-normous supply of sensory nerves (remember, 200,000), having sensing, active feet and viewing the feet as a sensory organ instead of just the bottom pile of a stack of bones is imperative in achieving balance.
Which is totally not a muscle thing. You can’t just muscle through this or else the feet will become too rigid. We want them to be adaptable and able to change depending on our balance needs.
Try balancing on a pillow or an unstable surface. The little adjustments that the feet make are the muscles adjusting to keep you upright. But why do they do that? Because of what they are sensing!! They are feeling changes in pressure, load, touch, and vibration within the tissue and switching on or off depending on the need. We don’t want to stop this system from doing its job!
Stop 5: The feet are the anchor to our sole.
Pun intended. There are also physiological and mental health benefits to being barefoot.
Our only connection to the ground is our feet. Through our feet we feel the ground underneath us, which emotionally keeps us grounded and able to think with a clear mind.
“Cultivating awareness of your relationship with the ground and to the space around you helps you know where you are, and that somatic knowledge helps you feel safe.”
– Mary Bond, Your Body Mandala
To your brain, the area around your body is a part of your body. Think about the feeling of a stranger standing too close to you. It’s weird and uncomfortable because they are invading what your brain sees as it’s area. Crazy huh? So it makes sense that if we are unaware of our space and unaware of the ground supporting us, we subconsciously feel like we have “our head in the clouds”.
If you are interested in more of this ^ then you should really look into Your Body Mandala by Mary Bond where this info comes from. I review it here and it is a really amazing book.
Being barefoot outside has even more positive effects. This concept is called “grounding” or “earthing” and according to some awesome research sythere are electrical charges in the earth that literally “charge us” into healthier people. The research on this topic is just beginning, but it shows that direct contact (barefoot) with the earth’s surface is shown to reduce inflammation, stress, and pain, and improve blood flow, sleep and vitality. (Source.)
I am so excited for the possibilities of this. I really don’t understand the physics behind this process of electron transfer (or is it chemistry?) but I am totally on board.
The end of the blog, beginning of the journey to better feet-
In order to get better feet, its not about the 2 minutes of exercise we do once a day. It is about a journey that gives our feet the best fighting chance to perceive sensations, be adaptable, build supple strength, balance and ground us physically and emotionally. This begins with taking off our shoes, and letting our feet do the rest.
2 Comments
Great article. I personally don’t like Vivobarefoot because the leather they use is very hard. I prefer Merrell Vapor Glove (fabric or leather -they feel like a glove!) Groundies is also a company that makes good soft barefoot shoes and there are many more companies one could list.
Nice! You should check out Anya’s Reviews, she reviews barefoot shoes and has TONS of different brands and, more importantly, discount codes! She is fabulous!