Flat feet… Are you cursed for the rest of your life??
Or are you blessed with a beautiful foot that can adapt and survive! Most of us have bought running shoes and have been through the whole process of getting our foot measured for its length and our arch height scrutinized. We are then told we fit into one of three categories: High arch, normal arch, or the low arch/dreaded flat foot…
Typically an individual with a high arch would respond well to a shoe with more cushion, and an individual with a low arch would respond well to a shoe with more support/stability.
Makes sense right? A high arch would be stiffer and a lower arch would be this floppy foot that needs support. Case closed, close the drawer, nothing to see here! Now hold on a minute! Surely there is evidence for wearing supportive shoes right? There must be evidence of decreased injuries in runners if they are “correcting” their compensations and mis-alignments with these shoes? Such as, overprontation, hip drops, and over-striding. Well… you’d be wrong! There is very conflicting evidence for the support and use of motion control shoes in runners who over pronate. I could go through a list of hundreds if not thousands of studies, one supporting the hypothesis, one refuting it. This can go on, and on, and on.
The point is, there is no clear evidence supporting the use of motion control shoes in those runners who are displaying over-pronation during their gait cycle. Throughout any given year 70% of distance runners will have some kind of musculo-skeletal injury. That’s crazy! If shoe selection and shoe quality were the issue, you think we would have fixed it by now? It’s only been… 50 years of marketing and selling shoes since the running boom of the 1970’s! Clearly shoes are not the answer to our problem!
So what do we do now? Hey, if I can’t buy my way out of this with a new shoe, what can I do to help myself? Can I “fix” my overpronation? The answer is YES, you can! But to answer that lets talk about why our feet are over pronating in the first place. Our feet have been sleeping for a long time. Every time we leave the house we jam them, lightly lace them up, or slide them into a pair of shoes. These shoes are like a stimulus stealing machine for our feet. I always like to compare my hands to my feet to drive home the dangers of wearing supportive, cushiony shoes. Your hands actually have arches just like your feet do! Now imagine this, every time before you leave the house you put on a mitten made out of rubber and plastic over your hands. Not just warm mittens you’d were during a snow storm, but think of these as shoes for your hands. Do you see where I’m coming from? Good luck opening the door to get out of your house, let alone opening your car door.
If we start to revitalize our feet and start to stimulate them with activation, exercises and mobility work its amazing what our feet are capable of! You are not doomed to have to wear supportive shoes your whole life, there is nothing wrong with your feet! Just as human beings our feet come in many different shapes and sizes! Some a little wider than others!
Improving your arch height and decreasing the amount of pronation your foot and ankle goes through will take some time…Probably a lot of time! And if you work at it you will make progress! Below are a couple exercises you can do to start the process.
If you have any other questions about improving your arch height and mobility please CLICK HERE and you can schedule a time to talk to one of our therapists! We have three clinic locations in Gaithersburg, Frederick, and Columbia.
