So, that's one good thing to do is to strengthen those toe flexor muscles and your foot muscles that sit deep up in your arch. It helps to kind of curl your toes (shown above) to support that arch of your foot so that you don't flatten out too much as you're walking and running and going about your day. When doing this, you may notice that your big toe is up off the floor. When you find that, your knee should be roughly in line with your foot. Then find a mid-range that's halfway between all the way in and all the way out. Then go all the way the other direction, go as far into supination where your foot comes up this way and your knee goes out. Your knee will go inwards as you're doing that. Go inwards as far as you can, make your foot actually as flat as you can possibly make it. To do that, put your foot on the floor and go all the way into pronation. How To Fix Flat Feetįirst of all, what you want to find the proper alignment for your foot. If you're having a functional flat foot due to overpronation, that is a type of problem that you should fix. This can cause knee problems, IT band issues in your hip, or rotation in your lower back. If you have too flat of a foot, it drives your knee inward. Just like a house, if the foundation is weak, then the rest of the house will suffer. Your feet are the foundation of you body. If you have a functional flat foot, that is a type of flat foot that you CAN fix.Īnd it's advisable to fix your flat foot so that the rest of your body works in proper mechanics. In order to do that, your arch and your foot have to work in proper dynamic so that it's flattening just a little bit, but then it comes out of that quickly as you go through your walking cycle or through your running cycle. This makes the foot become a r igid lever so that you can push off your big toe to take your next step. However, it can't stay there for too long because when you go to push off, it has to come back the other direction into supination. It should absorb shock.įor example, if you're walking (or even more so if you're running), when you load weight on your foot, your foot should pronate or flatten down just a little bit in order to help act like a shock absorber. Your foot needs to serve two major functions.įirst, as you're loading weight onto it. Structurally, you do have an arch in the bones of your foot, but when you put your foot down on the floor, your arch "falls" or flattens foot too much. In this case, you have an arch in your foot when it's off the floor, but then when you put it down on the floor, your foot flattens out, and that's more of a functional flat foot. The second type of a flat foot is truly a fallen arch. This is a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Functional Flat Foot So, if you have a structural flat foot, meaning that it's flat both with your foot on and off the floor, and it's been there for quite a long time (all of your life), chances are you probably don't need to fix your flat foot unless it's starting to cause you pain. That's because you're throwing them out of the alignment that they've been used to being in. Therefore, if you correct the flat foot "problem", so to speak, you may actually start to cause problems in other areas of your body. The rest of your bones developed to be in normal alignment when your feet are flat. If the rest of your body throughout your life has developed to compensate for that flat foot. In fact, in many cases, people who have a structural flat foot actually don't have pain. If roughly one in every 3-5 people has it, it can't be that big of a deal. Therefore, having flat feet is NOT all that abnormal. There's no arch in your footprint as compared to a normal footprint.Ībout 20 to 30 percent of the population has flat feet. If you take a step on the ground, you'll see that your foot just basically makes a blob. You may sometimes hear flat feet referred to as pes planus - Latin words meaning "flat feet". Structural flat feet aren't really a fallen arch - the arch just never formed. Your parents or your grandparents may have had flat feet as well. This is often due to overpronation of your foot. In a functional flat foot, you have an arch in your foot when you don't have weight on your foot but when you step down on it your arch "falls". In this case, your ache does form during development, but your arch drops over time. Functional Flat Feet (Fallen Arches)įlat feet that develop during adulthood are sometime referred to as fallen arches. Therefore, you were born with a flat foot, and it just never formed as you were developing and as you went through your life. In a structural flat foot, the bones of your arch never formed. There two general categories of flat feet:
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