If not supportive shoes, then what? My feet are killing me!
Do you live in Tampa Bay and have painful feet?
Hopefully if you live in Tampa Bay you have read our other blog on how your rigid shoes are likely making you weaker and more uncomfortable.
If you have you may then be wondering what you can do about your painful feet and how to stop the discomfort from getting worse.
First, we need to ask some questions about your discomfort:
Is it both feet that are bothering you or is it just one foot?
Are they sore all the time or just when you wear certain shoes?
Do you currently wear inserts in your shoes?
What movements make the pain in your feet worse?
Have you suffered from any form of back injury?
These next few points are going to be very general in relation to the complexity involved when it comes to foot pain.
Let's assume that you are dealing with foot pain in both feet.
This means BOTH feet, specifically the arches of your feet are inflamed and painful. You notice that when you wear shoes with higher arch supports, it seems to decrease your pain but that pain returns as soon as the shoes come off.
This is a fairly common occurrence in women who have undergone c-sections or overly stressful childbirths. This is due to the stress caused to the abdomen and pelvic floor during such events. (Yes. Your kids started causing you pain in the feet before they became a pain in the ass… potentially… I kid. See our post on the negative effects of c-sections and traumatic births)
Try this to get an idea of where your foot pain is coming from.
To understand this connection between the abdominal muscles and your feet, I need you to stand up for me. Take your shoes off and stand on a firm surface. I want you to lock/straighten your knees and now curl your toes and form an arch in your feet. Did you feel how that shift changed the position of your legs and triggered you to tighten your abdominals and glutes (stomach and butt)?
If you can't get it right away, stand in front of a mirror so you can see your pelvis move. If that does not help, then you may have caused an excessive degree of "muscular inhibition", meaning a loss in the sensory ability of that tissue to communicate with the nervous system. If that is the case, Muscle Activation Techniques with a Master Level MAT specialist will be able to teach your body to have the appropriate response to this drill by reactivating those muscles.
Just by getting this one group of muscles working correctly, you can start a chain reaction in your body that will allow you to get more and more “muscles working”. The more muscles you have working properly the stronger you become and the less likely you are to be in pain.
Now if you are someone that experiences pain in one foot only, then there is a different way we can impact that. It may seem more complicated - and I’ll spare you in this post - but I deal with that often as well.
Yours in health,
Kevin