I am no doctor, but if one thing is tight in one area, you probably have something going on in a neighborhood nearby.
Ida Rolf would infamously say: “Where you think it is, it ain’t.”
So many times where pain shows up in our body has to do with a complex system of events that led to that pain. This week I want get to the root, the base, the bottom if it all…
OUR FEET!
Our feet have a direct correlation to what is happening above them.
Now, take a look at the shoes you tend to wear. Are they higher in the back? Yeah, of course heels are gonna be high. And they are gonna be cute. But look at your OTHER shoes. Your athletic shoes. your sandals. What kind of heel do they have on them?
ANY amount of lift at your heel is going to ask your muscles to adapt to the situation presented to them. Here are two examples:
See how this athletic shoe has an incline? It’s basically a more supportive version of the kitten heel seen to the right!
Kitten heel. Cute? Sure. Good for your feet after walking around for hours at an event? Not so much…
I think one of the benefits of us having to work more from home is not having to wear shoes as often. Wearing shoes all the time is like having to wear a really stiff leather mitten all day long. It might protect our feet, especially in an environment where we need to not step on glass, or nails or whatever is in the street. BUT what it does NOT allow is for our hand (in this scenario) to be able to move as intricately as it could. Imagine trying to type, trying to write, or pick up something with a big mitten on all day. You would probably end up using more muscles in your forearm and lose a lot of muscle tone in your hands. Your hands would get stiff over the years. They might be tingly, achey, sore, swollen. And do we just chalk that up to “getting old”?
Now I am not saying THROW OUT YOUR SHOES!! GO BAREFOOT ALL DAY!! (but if you do that, cool!!!) What I am asking is for you to start to notice what you tend to put on the bottom of your foot. Our bodies are so incredibly adaptable. Wearing heels out to a restaurant where you are sitting is maybe a better option than at an event when you know you will be standing for long periods of time. (Of course “events” seem like a thing of the past these days…)
Guys, dudes, men!! This goes for you, too. Look at your dress shoes, how much of a heel is on them? That is going to affect your body as well!
One thing we can do to counteract the tightness we tend to feel after wearing shoes with heels is to simply stretch the backs of our legs. That includes our calves, hamstrings, and the soles of our feet.
I love a calf stretch at the bottom of my steps, but here is another option: Grab a towel or roll up your yoga mat (pictured here is a half foam roller, aka half dome, which is also convenient as it is about the height we want to get a pretty good stretch at the back of the calf at about 2-3 inches high.
Side view with a half dome. Try this with a rolled up bath towel at home. No fancy equipment required!
Front view. Make sure your second toes are pointing straight ahead of you. Can you still wiggle your toes on the side you are stretching?
Place the ball of one foot at the top of your towel or half dome. Bring the other foot beside the dome on the floor. Try to stand up straight without a banana back or tilting forward. Make sure your head is ontop of your shoulders, imagine your lungs are right over your hips, and your hips are right over the center of your feet, not behind or in front of them (refer to my previous blog post for your body alignment tips).
Next, see if you can step your other foot forward without compensating your alignment. And then do a test: Can you wiggle your toes of your foot on the dome? Can you stand up straight, like a describe above? If NOT, back up your other foot until you can. Basically we are finding the place where we start to feel the stretch. This is where we want to hang out. This ALSO tells you what the true length of your walking stride is without other stuff trying to help!! Pretty enlightening right?
As you can see here, my real walking stride is like 1 inch in front of my other foot!! Some of you may even have a NEGATIVE stance (the foot you aren’t stretching is BEHIND the one you are stretching). If your walking stride is short, that means your shins, your hip flexors and your low back are probably doing a lot to try to make up for the tightness in your calves and ankles to get you to go forward into the world. Your glutes may not be firing well to help propel you forward in space, and then we are basically just sort of falling forward and catching ourselves with every step! That’s Ok, just start to take your shoes off and do this stretch more!
It takes our muscles about 90 seconds-2 minutes to get the message that we want to change their length and normal patterning. So set a timer and see if you can stay in this stretch for at least 90 seconds on each leg. You can do this stretch multiple times per day. Use it as an excuse to get up out of your office chair (or your makeshift home office)!
Lastly, while you stretch, remember to breathe!!! Deeply and slowly!!
Bonus stretch:
Tops of your feet.
If the back of your calf is tight, that probably means the FRONT of your shin is doing a lot of work to get your foot to flex to strike your heel in front of you. Those poor shins and the top of your foot are probably tight. If you have had shin splints you KNOW what this feels like. But often we are walking around with tight shins and don’t even realize it!
Soooo. That means we should stretch the top of your foot too!
Start here to stretch the top of your foot. (You can multitask at your desk!!!)
For a more advanced version, you can try it standing with the “stretching” side knee bent.
Need MORE fun? Try it with both legs straight!
Start seated in a chair, place the top of your foot on the floor, aiming to get all your toe nails on the ground. Make sure you don’t roll out onto your pinky toes with your heel out to the side, See if you can get on top of the big toe with your heel in line with your leg.
Try it standing, with the same idea, try to keep weight over your big toe and second toe. The tendency most likely will be to go over to that pinky toe because it’s easier there!
In the second picture you will see that my knee is still bent when I am standing. To make this even more advanced you can straighten the leg further back behind you, like the last picture to the right.
Let me know how it goes and tune in for my next post when I show you some self massage work you can do for your feet, calves and shins to begin to gain mobility back into your lower limbs!