Orthotics and Your Joints

Image courtesy of facebook.com

Last week I discussed how the use of orthotics can limit the motion of the joints of the feet, putting those joints' health at risk. Now I want to discuss what may be happening at the joints throughout the rest of your body when you use orthotics.

Once again, let me state what this post is and is not intended to do:

1) This post is not saying orthotics are bad. There may be a specific reason why you or somebody else has no other choice but to wear them.

2) This post is not telling you to immediately get rid of your orthotics. That could cause a lot of discomfort if your body is not ready for it.

3) This post is not telling you to completely disregard everything that the person who put you in orthotics has told you.

What this post is trying to do is to present some information that you may not be aware of regarding what may be happening to the rest of your body by wearing orthotics.

Okay, now on to the info.

Image courtesy of blogs.windsorstar.com

So I guess the easiest way in my head for me to see and comprehend this is if I think about a time I sprained an ankle. So if you can, imagine when you have sprained an ankle or known of somebody who has sprained an ankle. The ankle and possibly foot get all swollen up and it might hurt like heck to walk on, but what is usually a given in those scenarios is that it is now hard for the ankle to move. It is difficult to plantarflex and dorsiflex around the talocrual axis and as such part of your rehab or recovery work is traditionally exercises that are trying to reinstate this motion.

Without this normal motion of the ankle, you see people compensating and walking with a limp. A lot of times this is related to the current discomfort of putting weight on that injured foot, but even as the pain dissipates people can still be seen walking with this limp. So yes, while this blatant compensation may initially be due to avoiding discomfort, it may also be in part due to, among other things, the inability of the individual to have proper motion around their ankle, leading to them finding other ways to walk from point A to point B.

So what do you see with these individuals? Usually they are picking up motion at possibly the hip, knee, and various spinal levels in order to make up for the lack of motion available to them through their ankle. In other words, because their ankle motion is limited, they now have to move more than they normally would through their hip and/or other joints in order to compensate and walk as efficiently as they can.

Now, this compensation isn't a bad thing. In fact, it is surely better than the alternative of not being able to walk at all. But at the same time, if you are moving around one or more joints more than is required for unaltered efficient gait (walking) in order to potentially make up for a lack of motion at another joint, those joints that now have the increased motion may start to be worn down faster because they are being used in a manner that is inefficient for both their design and the completion of the desired task.

Imagine you could only raise your arm up to shoulder height, so in order to reach up onto a shelf or something you had to bend backwards until your arm was more up towards the ceiling. Eventually, your back would probably start to feel not so great. The same concept holds true for when you are trying to compensate around an injured ankle that lacks motion. You begin to pick up motion elsewhere in order to still walk, which, over time may lead to issues at these other joints.

Image courtesy of doczeke.com

And, to the subject of this post, the same concept holds true for when you use orthotics.

As I have stated in the past, there are 28 bones that make up the joints of the ankle and foot accumulating to 55 articulations between those bones*. If you consider each of those articulations as a place where possible motion can occur, you can see how implementing something such as an orthotic, which may effectively limit motion at all of those articulations, may cause the motion that is not happening around these joints during gait or other activities to be picked up elsewhere throughout the body. Furthermore, you can now see how having this increased motion at other joints as a means to make up for the restricted motion imposed by the orthotics, while useful in the short term, may over time lead to issues at the joints where greater motion is being required, IN ADDITION to the increased risk of the health of the joints whose motion is now limited (as discussed the previous two weeks).

So, what does all this mean? Well, like I said, I'm not saying orthotics are bad or you get rid of your orthotics. However, while their use may make you feel really good right here in the moment, there may be long-term consequences that aren't necessarily ideal and that should be thought through before implementing into your daily life. Furthermore, other options may want to be explored as well, such as Muscle Activation Techniques™, which can provide the opportunity to achieve the desired mobility of the joints by first and foremost increasing the stability of those or other joints.

Finally, just to clarify, this post is not a suggestion to inappropriately mobilize joints. In the example given with the injured ankle, there is a very good reason why it is not moving. That example was merely used to highlight a scenario that many of us have experienced in which we have limited motion around one axis and subsequently compensate by increasing or altering the motion around other axes.

Do you wear orthotics? How much information were you given in regards to what they may be doing to the rest of your body before you began using them?

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!

*Roskopf, Greg. Advanced Foot Function. Muscle Activation Techniques™ Mastery course. p 5. February 2013.