The entire body is a unit and nothing should be neglected when it comes to mobility; although in almost all cases somewhere, on someone, something is being overlooked.
I have NEVER seen or worked with ANYONE that has perfect mobility all around. I also would never expect anyone to be this way. Yes, I have seen many people who are flexible as hell all around but not mobile in those positions.
I wrote a post on the
difference a while back.
It is hard to get to a
point where mobility is perfect and there are no lagging areas. I am aware of
my areas that need work; I work on them daily; and they still aren’t anywhere
near perfect.
Although there are many different areas that are neglected on a variety of people, the one area that I see the most often that causes the most amount of issues is…THE FEET. I also tie in the ankle to this area as well.
I worked with one woman
that expressed her need and want to increase her balance. I began with simple
movements that would have her balance on one foot and she couldn’t do it for
the life of her.
I asked her why she
thinks this is so difficult for her and she had no rhyme or reason.
I was attempting to test
her ankle mobility with a move that will be discussed later on in this post,
but it involves the big toe. I explain the movement to her and her response
baffled me.
“I don’t have those”
I was shocked for two
reasons. One I have never worked with anyone who had both big toes removed, and
two, she never mentioned this for the entire time we worked together until this
point.
The big toe is one of
the biggest factors to balance and that was something that kept me puzzled week
over week with this client but I was happy to get to the bottom of the issue.
Now I make it a priority to focus on all my client’s feet and ankles to make sure things travel up the body correctly. Also to make sure there are no surprises such as this one.
Now think about the
people you see at the gym, you train with, you watch online, how many of them
do you notice have a foot and ankle mobility routine?
It is kind of like
looking for people who strength train their calves, not many (there is good
reason to do so by the way).
Why
Should You Focus On The Feet
It is the principal of
working from the ground-up. You are on your feet for so many hours of your
life; standing, walking, running.
Not a bad place to
start. Having poor recruitment patterns within the feet and ankles will travel
up the body and radiate pain throughout your joints.
Joint pain (without
direct impact injury) can be caused by the joint above or below a specific
area. If your feet and ankles are causing knee pain, that pain could move up to
your hip, then up to your lumbar spine. You can see where I am going with this.
Address your feet and
ankles!
When you are doing things on your feet like walking, squatting, deadlifting etc. you should have three points of contact. If you don’t have these three points of contact then you have to start working on how your feet and ankles operate. And yes you can train your body to be able to achieve this.
Another test you can try
is using a corner of a wall, place you big toe on the wall so it is flexed and
pointing straight up, now drive your knee forward while keeping your heel
planted. You want to get about 3 inches past your toes with your knee.
I think I am going to do
a post sometime soon about different exercises and drills to do for this area
of your body. In the mean time start doing what you can to fix these issues and
watch how it fixes other parts of your body.
