Hi. It’s Cheryl Dunn. Welcome back. Today I’m going to talk to you about strengthening your feet. Hopefully you had an opportunity to watch my last video on how to roll your feet out and make them feel better, and you’ve been doing that now for a couple of weeks. Now it’s time to strengthen your feet, so here we go.
I’m going to teach you where your feet are in space, so how to align them up, and give you a few exercises to strengthen them once you get them there. So here we go.
First, I’m going to show you parts of the foot that I’m talking about. The first thing I want to show you is the areas of the foot that I’m going to refer to. We’ve got our big toe ball, our little toe ball, and our heel. So that is what I’m going to refer to as the tripod of the foot. I’ll also refer to this medial arch, so this is going to be the inside of our foot, and this is going to be the outside of our foot. Those are the only areas that I’m really going to refer to today as we start to do our work.
First, we’re going to work on finding that nice tripod in the foot in a standing position. So let’s go ahead and stand up. You want to start with pressing down into your big toe ball, so we’re rolling our feet in. So I call this arches in. Then we’re going to roll our feet out so we find that little toe ball. We’re going to call that arches out. So let’s just roll it in and roll it out. Then I want you to find … Keep doing this a couple of times until you can find this nice balanced place where you’re equally on your big toe ball, your little toe ball, and your heel.
As you can see, when I completely relax my feet, they don’t like to do that. They roll way in. But when I really press through my big toe ball and my little toe ball and my heel, then my feet come into a nice alignment in the ankle joint, and then it’s not rolling in anymore. So in this place, this is where you want to balance your feet out. This is where you want to work from. This is where you want to walk from. As I start to continue with more strengthening exercises, we want to make sure that you have this nice neutral place. Your toes don’t grip so much, and you’re not rolling way in or rolling way out. That you’re really right there in the middle of that. All right.
Now, I’m going to go ahead and grab a chair. All right. The first exercise I call the inch worm. You want to spread your toes really wide, reach them out, and then I want you to pull your toes towards your heels. Spread your toes really wide, reach them out, and pull your heels towards your toes. And you can reverse that. Push your toes away so that your heels walk back. Pull your toes in, push them away. I’m going to show that with one feet so you can see the inside of my foot. I’m going to spread my toes nice and wide, reach them long, and pull my heel towards my toes. Spread my toes nice and wide, reach them long, and pull my heel in. You want to do that several times forward and then reverse it. You’re going to press with your toes, taking your heel away from your toes. Pull your toes in, press them away, heels down. And again, pull your toes in, press them away, and heels down. So that’s my little inch worm exercise.
The next one I like to do is just a doming of the foot. I like to find those anchor points we talked about earlier, that big toe ball, the heel, and the little toe ball. You want to reach and try and dome the whole arch up and pulling at that big toe ball as well. So I’m doming the whole foot, and then I’m going to release it back down. I’m going to find those anchor points, big toe ball, little toe ball, and heel, and I’m going to feel them so that I know my foot is not rolling in or rolling out, that it’s in its neutral place. From there, I’m going to try and dome the whole foot so I can lift both this medial arch and the transverse arch that goes across those knuckles. Then I’m going to relax that back down. Make sure I’m in a good nice neutral foot, and then dome it up. You want to do this several times with both feet.
The next one I’m going to do is I call toe lifts or playing the piano with your toes. In this one, I like to lift my toes, spread them really wide, and place them all down. So try and just lift your big toe ball and then place it down, and then just lift your little pinky toe. You can see that’s much harder for me, keeping the toe ball down, and then try and just lift your big toe, keeping your other ones down. And then try and just lift your outer toes, keeping your big toe down. Good.
Now, the piano part. You’re going to go little toe, next toe, next toe, second toe, big toe. Let’s do that again. Little toe down, second, third, fourth, fifth. And then reverse it. Big toe up, second toe up, third toe up, fourth toe up, and little toe up. Good. So you’re just trying to do those feet like a piano or like a fan waving or a wave waving. That will help strengthen your feet.
Now you’ve rolled your feet out. You’ve got some strengthening exercises. Go do these exercises and see how strengthening your feet and paying attention to where they are in space can change your whole body.
Thanks for watching.
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