Feet Need Love
Foot Locomotion “Feet Need Love” (Foot Bone Mobilization)
This "Feet Need Love" video demonstrates basic techniques to stretch and strengthen the feet using weight bearing movements. There are twenty-six bones in each foot, and with practice flexibility can be increased. Happy Feet + Pep In Your Step = Foot Locomotion
This technique is called bone mobilization and it’s referring to the feet. No that’s wrong. Come this way just a tiny bit right there. Start over? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. This technique is called bone mobilization.
We’re going to look at our feet. Each foot has 26 bones and many individual joints. Our foot spends most of its day in a shoe being pounded into the ground. Learning how to mobilize the bones in your feet can really help improve the spring -like mechanism in your legs which makes your whole body feel better, a lot less pounding when you’re walking.
This technique comes from Tai Chi. You’re going to place your hands on your pelvis, take a step out on a diagonal with your right leg. You feel free to adjust your position to what feels best to you.
You want to feel like you can rock into your right leg and then rock back into your left. This knee is going to bend. Practice loading the weight into the ball of your foot and then rocking back. This stretches the joints in your feet, the plantar fascia which is the tissue on the bottom of your foot.
Then you can keep this foot in a similar position and begin to circle the ankle. You can look and see your heel bone moving in an actual circle. You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll regain more range of motion.
At first it might be a small circle and within a few rounds it’s getting bigger. There are many ways to stretch your feet. Here are a few others. You can always hold on to something if you feel unsteady.
Curl your toes under and gently apply pressure. If it feels good, lean into it. In the beginning, be a little conservative and definitely hold on to something if you have sensitive feet. Practice lining up your feet regularly when you’re standing.
You can also practice this alternating left to right, just pedaling your ankles. And then when you’re sitting down, rotating your ankles while you’re sitting in a chair, scrunching your toes, spreading your toes.
Try to see airflow between all your toes. If some of them are stuck together, focus particularly on opening up the space between those toes.
