Foot intrinsic muscle strength can be a long journey. It can feel like you are not making any progress even after hours of practice, but I assure you that the effort is well worth it!
After mastering some of the basic exercises and movements for foot muscle control. (found here, attach first post) you can move on to more advanced techniques. For some background, I learned these movements from working for a very unique therapist. I had the opportunity to learn from a physical therapist in Boston that was previously a professional ballet dancer. Because of his past career, this therapist had a caseload full of dancers, ranging from young students to professionals
As you can imagine, these dancers had foot injuries galore. Some were from traumatic falls or slips during practice, but most were caused by overuse.
To make matters worse for these patients, many of them lacked the proper control of the foot intrinsic muscles needed to provide support to the overworked feet. They were plenty strong, and had incredible balance, but they lacked the ability to maneuver the feet and toes while dancing. This lead to overworked bones and ligaments, and put them at a greater risk for injury.
The issue that these dancers had is called motor control. Simply put, motor control is how well we can control all of the muscles in unison to produce coordinated movements. Since the feet have over 100 individual muscles a piece, motor control can become an issue very quickly.
Now I know that most of you are not professional dancers, but these exercises can help almost anyone, as gaining the proper control of the foot musculature can improve performance in activities like running and jumping. Excellent motor control of the feet can also decrease the risk of injury and greatly improve balance, making lifting and other gym workouts less stressful on other parts of the body.
The most common stumbling block to excellent foot motor control is not being able to move the toes and ankle independently. The muscles that control the toes actually cross the ankle on their way down the leg. They start half way up the shin bone, and travel behind the ankle to the ends of the toes. Because these muscles pass by the ankle, it requires specific control of the intrinsic muscles to move the toes while keeping the ankle completely still. The following exercise will help you learn how to properly control the ankles and toes.
Ankle flexion with toe curl 1
Ankle flexion with toe curl 2
Heel walking with sock grab
The second component of foot motor control is something called doming of the feet. Doming is a movement where a muscle called the posterior tibialis is activated to raise the arch of the foot. While doing this, the intrinsic foot muscles need to also be active to maintain the foot in a proper shape. Ideally, the toes and heel will remain in contact with the ground without bending, while the arch is slowly raised off the floor.
Standing Doming
Single limb doming
Doing these exercises 2-3 times a week will improve your motor control of the feet. With time, you will be able to control the feet in other activities too! I have had many clients greatly benefit from foot motor control exercise from people getting back to soccer after an ankle sprain to increasing deadlifts in the gym.
Let me know if you give these exercises a shot and what your goals are with improved foot health!
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