Lets chat about the feet for a minute. Not sure who needs to hear this but there are over 7,000 nerve endings in each foot. These nerve endings are sending signals to the brain about what’s happening below. During exercise, sport, or just daily living we tend to ignore foot placement as well as just general health of our feet. I want to take a deeper dive into foot functioning, how to jump, how to squat, and how to land. If we do this improperly it places undo stress on our knees and achilles. Let’s be honest, we probably shouldn’t have knee pain just walking around on a daily basis. Check out these 4 things that may help alleviate some knee pain.
Squatting with your feet forward-We have fallen in love with getting to proper depth with the squat that we have lost touch with foot placement. We generally can get a little extra depth if we kick our toes out a bit. The problem with this is that we tend to put more pressure on the inside of our feet as opposed to the outside of our feet. This tends to put more pressure on the achilles and knee that overtime can cause injury. Try working on keeping your feet straight as well as putting pressure on the outside of your feet.
Landing on the balls of your feet-Stepping down from a box, or dropping from a pull up bar, try landing on the balls of your feet. Another nuance is trying to land with the pressure on the outside toes. Similar to our squat this helps keep the pressure away from the achilles and knee. Really try and avoid landing on your heels with your knees caving in. Try jumping and landing more towards your mid foot and see how it feels.
Lunging with the back foot pointed in-Similar to the aforementioned points above keeping the weight on the outside of your feet takes the stress off of your knees. When doing this you will really feel this in your glutes. These muscles are perfectly suited to handle the stress of running and jumping.
Walking and running with the front toe forward and back toe in-You see a trend here? Yes as we start running and walking we can start to feel the pressure staying on the balls of our feet as well as the outside of our feet. Consciously doing this on a daily basis can lead to doing it unconsciously (muscle memory) and could lead to less pain and better performance. Try to work on these this week and tell me how it helps.
