All Of Your Questions Answered About Shoes Ad Feet!
Courtney Conley is an internationally renowned foot and gait specialist. She was recently interviewed about foot issues and shoes in a 2.5-hour podcast interview. Here's some of what I learned, her shoe recommendations, and discount codes!
Our foot issues are related to having weak feet, partly because we start confining them in shoes at an early age.
Diagnoses of "flat feet" were 3 times higher in kids who wore shoes, compared to those who went barefoot and developed stronger arches.
We have weak toes!
Toe weakness is a predictor of ailments like plantar fasciitis, and one of the best predictors of falling!
Do you lift your toes with every step? I see this all the time with clients. They've stopped using their toes!
There’s a 35% decline in toe strength from age 50 to 80. At 50, it takes 20% more pressure to stimulate nerve receptors versus when you were 20.
Our feet need feedback from the ground. Between the ages of 50 and 85, we develop 75% less sensitivity to these receptors.
Why is that? Lack of foot strength.
The good news: exercise increases circulation to the nerves, resulting in increased sensation, which decreases pain and improves sensation--even in people with peripheral neuropathies!
Stand close to a wall and measure from your belly button to the wall. Keep your body straight and lean toward the wall as far as you can. Your toe strength stops you from smacking your face into the wall.
Falling often occurs when your toes are weak and you keep going....
Foot dysfunction
The foot is the only place you can see when things are going wrong.
When you see bunions and hammer toes and tailor’s bunions, think, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to look. I should pay attention to it.”
Courtney recommends caution about foot surgeries for those symptoms, like bunions, because it doesn't strengthen the muscles that allowed them to happen.
Bunions: No, they're not hereditary. Courtney says, "You don’t come out of the womb with a bunion." Take a look at the insert of your shoe. If you see a lot of wear underneath the second or third metatarsal, you’re probably walking around with too much pressure there. (They're generally caused by hip weakness.)
Hammer toes: are a muscle imbalance due to a weakness in the foot.
Plantar fasciitis: "All roads keep point to plantar fasciitis as a canary in the coal mine, that your feet are weak." Instead of focusing on calf stretching, look at the strength and stability of the foot. First, make sure that’s what it is. No imaging study confirms it; you have to exclude other things. There are 2 stages. The acute stage, your initial injury, is treated very differently. Orthotics often can help in those initial stages of an acute injury because you are offloading.
Chronic heel pain is degenerative, this is repetitive load. Walking on a foot that can’t handle load causes tissue breakdown. Those cases require strengthening not deloading.
Tendons need load. From the plantar fascia perspective, you have to load the tissue for it to get stronger.
Achilles tendon issues: Rest is not good for tendons. Anyone who’s had an Achilles tendinopathy and rests for a week says, “Yeah, it feels great.”
But when they return to sport or to walking without having loaded the tendon, they’ll be right back where they started. Loading a tendon creates a chain reaction that creates tendon healing, similar to bones. The most important thing for strengthening bones and tendons is force on them.
Orthotics: Research says 2 weeks and no more than a year. "There has to be an [orthotic] exit strategy. While you’re planning this exit strategy, you need to be strengthening the foot."
Shoes
Let kids' feet feel the ground as often as they can, on all different types of surfaces.
A wide toe box is mandatory with all footwear.
Take the factory insert out of your shoe and stand on it. If your forefoot expands wider than the insert, it’s too narrow.
A “zero drop” is where the heel and toe sit on the same plane. We want to stay close to zero drop. It’s how we were designed to walk.
She doesn't call out "mattress-soled" squishy shoes like Hokas and On Clouds by name but says that adding stack height and cushion changes your mechanics and interferes with your perception of the ground.
"We have receptors in the heel that tell us, 'Hey, don’t land so heavy because it hurts.'" A thick sole interferes with that message and we hit EVEN HARDER on the heel.
Steven Sashen (who owns Xero) has an ad that Courtney loves: “I don’t wear comfortable shoes and you shouldn’t wear comfortable shoes either.” 🤣
If your feet hurt, they're sending a signal that they're under stress from how you walk or your alignment. Wearing fat-soled shoes is like telling your feet to shut up and stop complaining, rather than addressing the issue.
"Pillow shoes" allow you to overstride and land heavy without feeling it, and that’s not good. You need to feel what happens when your heel hits the ground.
There are shoes with a wide toe box that give you only a 3-5 mm heel-to-toe drop.
Altra
Go to Courtney's website to see a variety of shoes she endorses, some with discount codes.
I would add that your shoe should be flexible. If you can't easily twist it (I'm looking at you, Converse), it's too rigid.
People talk about wanting a shoe that's "supportive" but the right kind of shoe allows your muscles to do the supporting.
"Overstriding is the enemy.." I know you've heard that somewhere before....
There's too much impact when your foot lands ahead of your body. Your foot should strike as nearly directly below your body as possible. Each step is a little like falling forward.
It's never just a foot problem.
Stability comes from above. You have to look at the hip.
Does the pelvis pitch forward? That's the “open scissors” posture. (It's also associated with tight hip flexors.)
People often refer to it as "swayback."
This posture causes the arches to collapse, resulting in pressure on your big toe joints (bunions!).
If you're a TrainSmarter client, you've heard that before, too. 😊
Keys to happy feet
🦶 Wear shoes with a minimal drop, wide toe box, and relatively thin sole.
🦶 Keep your hips strong so they don't excessively internally or externally rotation.
🦶 Maintain a neutral pelvis.
🦶 Walk with a shorter stride, feet landing midfoot--NOT heel-toe--directly under the body.
🦶 Use your toes! They belong on the ground. Practice standing on one foot, using your big toe for balance.
Happy feet, happy life!
