MAT™ and Healthy Feet

Image courtesy of devonfeet.com

Your feet are comprised of 26 bones each (28 if you count the tibia and fibula due to their articulation with the talus)*, which create eight groupings of joints in each respective foot**.  The majority of these joints are considered to be synovial joints** and as such have certain requirements regarding motion and force that need to be met in order to remain healthy.

As I have written many times before, Muscle Activation Techniques™ is an assessment process to analyze what muscles are not contracting efficiently and a means by which to give those muscles the opportunity to contract better.  At the most basic level of understanding, a muscle does one thing:  generate tension in order to control the distance between its two endpoints of where it attaches into bone.  Subsequently, controlling the distance between these points also means muscles control how bones move on each other and, more specifically, how the contact surfaces of the bones articulate.

Going back to the feet, these synovial joints*** are comprised of many features, one of which is hyaline cartilage and another is synovial fluid.  Hyaline cartilage provides a low-friction, shock-absorbing surface for joints and survives by receiving its nutrients via a process called imbibition where the cartilage is squished, releasing its fluid, and then as it becomes "un-squished" it soaks up the nutrient-rich fluid around it.  Think of it kind of like a sponge.  Synovial fluid is released by the synovial membrane at the onset of joint motion, serving to keep the articulating joint surfaces lubricated.   The important take away from all of this is there are parts of your feet that need motion and force in order for the joints to remain healthy.

One way to help ensure that motion continues to occur in your feet and forces continue to be applied as they should is to make sure the muscles of your lower legs and feet are contracting as they should.  This is where MAT™ comes in.  By providing an opportunity for muscles to contract more efficiently, not only may you experience improved joint motion and force application in your feet and rest of your body as a result of the MAT™ process, but the health of those joints may also improve due to their need for motion and force in order to stay healthy.

By wearing shoes all day or doing activities where you are constantly on your feet (examples such as running and playing sports), the muscles of your feet may lose their contractile efficiency.  On the one hand with shoes, the requirements of your foot muscles may be very little, causing them to become deconditioned, similar to if you were to not exercise for an extended period of time.  On the other hand, asking the muscles of your feet to do too much based on their current set point may reduce their contractile efficiency, as well.  This is in part why it may be initially difficult for you to go from wearing shoes for years to not wearing shoes while you exercise--you haven't progressed to train the muscles of your feet to handle the forces of barefoot training but yet all of a sudden expect them to.

If this contractile efficiency is lost, the opportunity for efficient joint motion and force application to the joints may be lost as well, which will be detrimental to the health of those joints.

So, to recap and highlight the important parts:

1. Your feet are comprised of many bones and many joints.
2. These joints need motion and appropriate force application in order to be healthy.
3. Muscles create and control motion of the joints as well as apply forces to the bones which then get transferred through the joints.
4. If the muscles are not contracting efficiently, joint motion and appropriate force application may be limited.
5. Muscle Activation Techniques™ is a means by which to provide an opportunity for muscles to contract more efficiently.
6. Muscles contracting more efficiently = joints potentially moving better & forces potentially appropriately applied = healthier joints.

How well are the muscles of your feet contracting?  Schedule an MAT™ assessment to find out!

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form? You may, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yellow box below!

*Moore, Keith L.; Dalley, Arthur F.; Agur, Anne M.R..  Clinically Oriented Anatomy, Sixth Edition.  p 522.

**Moore, Keith L.; Dalley, Arthur F.; Agur, Anne M.R..  Clinically Oriented Anatomy, Sixth Edition.  p 652.

***While the information on synovial joints in this post can be found in many textbooks and online, it was first presented to me in the RTS™ courses.