Stability of Your Feet

Image courtesy of detroitfootpain.com

The other day I had a really interesting conversation with someone as we were noticing how another individual was walking.  The person I was with commented that they believed the reason the other person was walking how they were is because their body was unstable and as such their motion throughout their gait was locked up to protect them.


The person who I was talking to is not a Muscle Activation Techniques™ specialist, so I thought it was very interesting that they were expressing a similar view point to what is often discussed in the MAT™ courses.  However, before I could tell them this, this person followed their thought with (paraphrasing), "and that is why I would put them in supportive shoes, to give their body the stability to walk more normally."

Now, I by no means want to discredit this individual or their statement because they are in fact highly intelligent, but I do want to highlight something.

While adding a supportive shoe, an orthotic, or any other type of passive restraint to the feet will in fact limit the motion that can occur in the joints of the feet and therefore passively increase the stability of the feet, having the joints not move may not be the entire issue.  What may actually be the issue is the timing of when the joints move.

As Greg Roskopf says, function is about timing, so your feet have to be able to pronate when they are supposed to pronate and supinate when they are supposed to supinate.  In other words, how the joints move (or don't move) has to be taken into consideration along with when they move, too.

Using Greg's terminology again, sometimes your foot has to be a rigid lever and sometimes it has to be a mobile adapter.  And if it is one when it is supposed to be the other, this could lead to issues not only in the feet but throughout joints elsewhere in the body, too.

Unfortunately, by implementing a form of passive support that always restrains certain motions from occurring, such as a highly supportive shoe or an orthotic, the ability of the joints of the foot to now move when they are actually supposed to move has been compromised.

A highly supportive shoe or an orthotic may be perfectly appropriate for an individual for a number of reasons, so these devices are not necessarily bad, but they may not be addressing the entire issue, either.

So how did I respond to this comment?  "That's so interesting.  The end goal you are trying to achieve by implementing a supportive shoe sounds very similar to what I am trying to achieve by providing an opportunity for the muscles to contract better.  Except what you are doing through passive external support, I am trying to have their body do through active internal support."

Want to find out how MAT™ tries to do this?  Email me at charlie@selfmadefitness.com and we can discuss.

Interested in finding out more about MAT™?  Check out the Muscle Activation Techniques™ page!

Interested in setting up an assessment or discussing this subject further?  Leave a comment below or e-mail Charlie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com!

Your body.  Your training.

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