Running feet
I’m quite often heard banging on about the importance of our feet – especially about the energy that they can bring to our running (through their free elastic energy). This means that we need to look after our feet and perhaps give them some extra attention now and then.
What can go wrong?
Common foot injuries for runners include plantar fasciitis, stress fractures and other strains and sprains. These are generally overuse injuries, but if you twist your ankle you may feel it in your feet as well. Most overuse injuries can be avoided or reduced by managing training load, and by getting stronger.
What to do:
There are a number of exercises to help improve foot strength (and if you’ve done warm ups with me, you may be familiar with some of them) and the good news is that they are easy to do at home, and can often be done sitting down!
Here are a few of my favourites:
Toe scrunches: stand (or sit) with a towel on the floor in front of you. Using your toes try and drag the towel towards you and then push it away from you. Start with the towel on a smooth surface and once it’s easy move on to a carpeted floor
Toe pick-ups: Find some small objects and pick them up with your toes. These could be anything from marbles, lego bricks, pens, golf balls (or cat toys in my house). Get more precise by lifting the objects and dropping them in a cup.
Toe extensions: You use your big toe to push off on each running (and walking) stride so ensuring strength and mobility will help you to push of stronger. Roll up a small towel and place under your big toe then raise your heel. You can do this sitting or standing, and feel free to use a wall/chair back for balance
Run off-road: by changing the surface that you run on you will use more and different muscles to balance. This is a great way to build strength into your running
As with anything new, build up slowly so you don’t do too much too soon (see overuse injuries!). As an example try to do the exercises three times, have a 2 minute rest and then repeat. Make sure you do the exercises on both legs, noting if you can do them equally well on both sides. Mostly we’re stronger on one side than the other and focusing on bringing your weaker side up to scratch will also bring benefits to your running.