Toes training

You use your feet to stand, walk, run, and balance Stable feet constitute the base of your entire body – they even impact the position of your hips and pelvis when standing, walking or running. They serve as your foundation and are responsible for transferring all the force from your body to the ground.Even your spine can benefit from healthy feet, if movement patterns are conducted right starting from the feet. Everything’s connected! Often we hear people training their upper body, lower body, core yet seldom we hear someone talking about feet When your feet are weak, the rest of your body must compensate for the job your feet can’t do.! Not to mention, strengthening your feet will help alleviate and prevent pain throughout the rest of your body.

Of course Prevention is better than cure!

Why strengthen ? Because it can prevent injury. Stability and movements of your feet are controlled by instrinsic (short feet muscles located in your foot) and extrinsic (muscles originating from outside your foot skeleton) muscles – and we often forget about those smaller, shorter ones! For every step we take, the different layers of our intrinsic muscles control the extent and velocity of deformation of our foot arches. If those short muscles don’t work properly, our body’s base becomes unstable and can result in foot pain.

Exercise:

1.Toe gripping

place small balls or marbles on the ground and try picking them up with the toes. Toe gripping is one of the most effective exercises to train your intrinsic feet muscles. Whether you’re standing on both legs, on just one leg, inching forward or sitting at your desk… this move is perfect to strengthen your feet!

2. Toe yoga Can you intentionally move certain toes? Try it out! It may be more difficult than it seems. Start by lifting your big toe while trying to keep all other toes on the ground, then the other way around. This so-called “sun salutation of toe yoga” refers to intentionally splaying out all toes to eventually extend the gaps between your toes

3.Toes stretches

Kneel down with both base of the foot close to one another and the toes on extension, add on pressure with the body lean slightly backward towards the heel to generate the force applied to the feet to attain a great stretch. Repeat the steps with the toes on flexion.

4.Tip toes balancing stretching

When you are confident your toes are strong enough, you can now do it the hard way! Lift your heel; Support your body with your toes. To intensify the stretch attain, Lift your heels as high as possible, then slowly let them drop again.Your feet can reach an angle almost perpendicular to the ground. it is an exercise also good in strengthen the ankle joints. A stable ankle joint aids in ideal force transmission and prevents runners from getting injured (e.g. twisting your ankle).

Level up : Balance and tip toes with one leg instead. As you reach a stable position, reach your toes with both hands as you bend your body forward.

*both stretching only take less than 1 minutes to achieve a sufficient stretch

5. Stone stepping

Going back to the old fashion way. the free reflexology you can find in many parks with stones of different sizes can be a help to you. The changing and shifting surface of these rocks will help activate all of the proprioceptive nerves that exist under your feet. There are lots of them and these nerves connect directly with the lower back. Unfortunately, these nerves endings are mostly dormant in many people. It is not just coincidence that more than 80% of people suffer significant back pain in their lives. When your feet are weak, you are practically guaranteeing you will experience significant back pain at some point.

Those foot exercises don’t require a lot of time. What counts is doing them on a regular basis – try to incorporate those feet strengthening exercises into your everyday life. Work out your feet while brushing your teeth, during lunch break or during a recovery phase of your interval training.

#lifeatGuangzhou <3