Relieve flat feet, foot, ankle and knee pain with these three arch strength exercises. You’ll also build a foundation for moving pain-free in daily life.
Do you need help activating your foot intrinsics and performing the Short and Skinny Foot that Coach E always talks about in almost every exercise he performs? Well, I do, or at least I did.
If you want to learn the tricks I used to activate my foot intrinsics, read on. .
Hey, Dr. B here, Chief Medical Officer and Orthopedic Surgeon with Precision Movement. You’ve heard us talk many times about the importance of our foot intrinsics.
The foot intrinsics are the small muscles on the bottom of your feet. They act like little trampolines.
Every time you take a step, the force travels up your whole extremity. We see loads of injuries from plantar fasciitis, achilles tendonitis, patellar tendonitis, gastroc strains, all the way up to the hip and the back because the intrinsic muscles in the feet are weak.
The foot intrinsics are really critical in their function, and being able to turn them on and use them is important.
The problem is many people have difficulty connecting with those foot intrinsics. I know I did! Wearing shoes for many, many years my intrinsic muscles did not have to work and were just dead.
So, following the principles that Coach E and I use to activate and restore mobility, we’ve developed a little program that you can use if you’re having challenges with your tootsies.
What Are The Foot Arches & Why Do We Need Them?
We have two arches on the bottom of our foot: the transverse arch and the longitudinal arch. These form basically a triangle and a base that is really critical for stability when we move.
To start off, we do active self-myofascial release of the little muscles in your feet. They could be adherent to the bone, or they might be stuck to the fascia. They might even be stuck to one another, so we start by releasing them.
The active self-myofascial release that we perform is going to follow these arches. I use a variety of balls of different sizes. The very smallest is the size of a golf ball or a little bit larger, about the size of a tennis ball. You could use a tennis ball. You could use a golf ball.
I also experiment with some of the balls that are a little squishier. Some are quite hard. The reason I do this is I want to stimulate the muscles and the nervous system with different textures and feelings to try and wake up these sleepy muscles.
Arch Strength Exercises
If you want to follow along with a video, click over to How to Wake Up Your DEAD Feet (3 Exercises for Arch Strengthening) on YouTube.
Exercise 1: ASMR for Plantar Fascia
What you’re going to do is you’re going to stand on the ball along these arches.
You can go basically metatarsal by metatarsal, following the arch where you’re going to apply high pressure, and we’re going to have you actually moving your foot and rolling the ball along these arches. Moving your toes to try and get these intrinsic muscles awake and released from adjacent tissues. The amount of pressure you apply will depend upon your pain threshold, this is often very unpleasant at the beginning, this should not be torture, so apply as much pressure as you can tolerate, and gradually increase this over time. It becomes less painful with each passing day.
- Pick a ball – tennis, lacrosse, or golf
- Starting from the ball of your foot, roll the ball toward your heel while pulling your toes up
- Move the ball to a different spot, repeat
Do 30 seconds to a minute on each foot.
Exercise 2: Gross Muscle Activation
Once you’ve done the active self-myofascial release, it’s time to activate the muscles on the bottom of your foot.
If you’re having trouble isolating them doing the Short and Skinny Foot, we’re just going to turn them all on.
What I would do is try to touch my metatarsal heads to my heel. I’m trying to curl my whole foot, and I’m just turning all of the muscles on as hard as I can. I start slowly. I still get foot cramps doing this. You might, too. I breathe through it, start slowly and then work my way into a maximum contraction. Hold it for one or two slow breaths.
Thank goodness that’s over. But this is very helpful because you can get the foot intrinsics working.
- Sit in a chair
- Flex your foot – curl your foot under
- Hold for 1-2 slow breaths
- Relax
You can do this three times for one or two slow breaths.
I take an opportunity whenever I’m sitting at my desk to do this activation. I recommend that you do this several times throughout the day because being able to turn off or turn on your foot intrinsics creates a foundation for moving the rest of your body.
Exercise 3: Seated Short & Skinny Foot
The final exercise in the sequence is now a short and skinny foot. But seated instead of standing. We apply metatarsal pressure, so pressure under each of the metatarsal heads, and we activate the intrinsics pulling the metatarsal head towards our heel, and we hold it for one or two breaths. Then relax.
- Sit in a chair
- Use the muscles in your foot to pull your metatarsals together (skinny)
- Use the muscles in your foot to pull your metatarsals toward your heel (short)
- Hold for 1-2 slow breaths
- Relax
Do this three or four times per session.
Next Steps
You can do these exercises to strengthen foot arch at least once a day. But more effectively is, when seated at your desk, you can take your shoes off, pull out the ball, roll it a couple of times, do one of the global activations, and then a seated short and skinny foot.
Just to remind your feet how to work, and eventually, they’re going to come on, and they’re going to be ready to do the full-blown standing foot intrinsic exercises.
Once you can turn on your intrinsic muscles, I suggest you go to the 6 Intrinsic Foot Strengthening Exercises article that Coach E has put together.
And, in case you’re wondering if you can’t just skip the arch strength exercises and use orthotics instead, you might find this article on the truth about flat feet and orthotics interesting.
If you want to get your feet, and, by extension, your whole legs strong and healthy, take a look at the Lower Limb Control program. You’ll want to start with the Joint Mobility Routine as the first baby steps into getting those feet awake and your arches functioning.
