Welcome to The Weekly Dose!

Every week I set out to help educate you on movement practices and principles that will enable you to become a better athlete. Whether you are in High School or are a 75 year old grandparent trying to keep up with your grandkids this email will have value! Today I am going to share ways that you can build your athleticism from the ground up & why you should view your feet a little differently. I hope you enjoy!

I have to say that it is great to see the increased attention the foot is gaining in athletic training practices. Our feet hold over 25% of the bone structure, but yet hardly get appropriately “trained”. Today I want to talk about why you should care about improving the functionality of your feet & SIMPLE and EFFECTIVE ways you as an athlete can improve them.

First, let’s understand the geometry of your feet. Your foot is made up of a series of arches. We have three main arches in the foot: Medial, Lateral and Transverse. These three main arches of the foot play a crucial role in forming domes IF appropriately raised up and activated. This is important to understand in the context of what arches and domes provide.

Draw your attention to a bridge for a second. We know that a lot of the most popular bridges we see in the world use arches and the power of strong shapes to create a dome like structure. Why? This is because a dome can support an incredible amount of force and load. It provides a strong structure as millions of vehicles pass.

Now with this in mind examine your feet.

What do you notice about the shape of your foot (regardless of how “arched” it actually is)? Do you see how we too possess this same arch like structure? We need this as we hop, jump, run, change direction, etc.. as a way to dampen the force! If we do not have the ability to activate the main arches in our foot to form dome structures we will struggle to handle the force demands needed for sport. This is one of the leading reasons we are seeing so many lower leg injuries. I am sure you have been told, but when we sprint or jump we are exerting forces that are several multiples of bodyweight. How are we even able to do this? Think about that. If you were to go ahead and load up a barbell with 5 times your body weight to perform a single leg squat do you think you could do that?!

Now that I have drawn your attention to the structure of your foot let’s talk about how we can restore the functionality. Know this… IT CAN BE TRAINED & IMPROVED! I hate when people consistently talk about how they have injury prone ankles or feet & fail to expose themselves to any sort of barefoot stimulus. One simple solution for these people is to literally take off the shoes and perform any sort of freestyle textured training. This textured training can be over rocks, bricks, sticks or any other surface that heightens the sensation of your foot.

The foot and lower leg respond very well to sensory stimuli, proprioceptive challenge and high rep impulses. A way that we can do this is an adequate amount of repetition in hopping exercises. Insert the hyperarch hop. Hyperarch hops are simple and elastic hops that help load & activate the transverse arch. This will raise up the arch to form that dome like structure we talked about earlier.

A really quick thing I want to point out about the hyperarch hop… one of the main reasons why I love doing these is because it helps to build the aliveness of the tendons that sit atop the foot, the extensor digitorum. If you look at your own feet notice the difference between the top of them relative to your hands. You’ll probably find that your hands possess a more prominent structure. This is because they are far more active during the day than your feet are. Majority of us spend our day cramming our feet in shoes without experiencing any sensory input other than our foot against a shoe.

Our feet and body as a whole for that matter are not just made up of muscles that pull on bones to move. They are far more complex. We have a inner web of fascia (connective tissue) that runs throughout our body. This fascia forms the largest connected system of the body, it connects us like giant seran wrap.

 A good illustration of this is a long neck dinosaur. Look at the neck relative to the center of the body. Do you think its neck could withstand itself solely from muscles pulling on bones to keep it upright.. not a chance, right?! There’s no difference with the human body (other than being a little less extreme). The human body uses this fascial system with the skeletal system to help absorb external forces that are far beyond the capability of the muscles.

The last exercise that I want to leave you with is the 3 Way Hip Circle. This is a great exercise to build a connection from the foot to the hip. It involves a series of rotations, clockwise and counterclockwise, that demand prominent activation in your three arches. This exercise is a favorite in my warm ups before hopping, jumping or sprinting.

I hope that you find value in today’s email. There is a ton of information in here to help you on your 2024 athletic journey.

If you have interest to go deeper & struggle with information overload or just can’t seem to get yourself started check us out on our website and utilize our online training plans. We’d truly love to assist you!