As we’ve been talking about shock absorption before (previous post), let’s get started from the very beginning. Your feet. How often do you exercise your feet?
Your feet are the contact point between your body and the ground. With 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than a 100 muscles and ligaments your foot is designed to help absorbing the impact when you run.
Having a strong and mobile foot is the foundation to reduce the impact on your body and use ground reaction forces to improve your performance when running.
How do you know if your foot is strong/mobile enough? There are few things that you can try at home (video below):
- Spread your toes out
- Lift your big toes up while relaxing the little toes
- Lift your little toes up while relaxing the big toe
- Heels lift
- Grab something from the floor with your toes
Now that you have some specific feet exercises to do, it’s time to practice and strengthen these guys.
Next time we’ll talk about cadence and how does it influences running impact.
Talk to you soon,
MD Coach
(BA Ph.Ed, Certified Running Coach)