The importance of regular movement.
10,000 steps? We understand the importance of staying active throughout the day, and we also have a strong subconscious drive to save energy. Less movement is often associated with comfort and more movement with discomfort. We have therefore designed the environment around us to suit that biological drive. The consequences of this biological paradox, where a movement dependent organism meets a movement deprived environment, is in the epidemic of metabolic diseases such as typ 2 diabetes. Coupled with modern shoes we also deprive our muscle-skeletal system the necessary foundational stimuli to build strength and endurance in our feet to be...
Your daily shoes do the most damage!
Too often the focus is on the training shoe rather than our every day footwear.It’s what you have on your feet for most of the day which will have the biggest impact.One of the most common mistakes we see is that people only use their foot-shaped shoes during training, and narrow, symmetrical shoes all other hours.Let’s put it into perspective;Walking is 1,25x your body weight. If you weigh 80kg and take your 10000 steps per day, that’s 1000 tonnes of force through your feet.Running is up to 3x your body weight per step, if you're averaging 170 steps per minute, that’s almost...
Should I be walking heel - toe?
Walking is a heel to toe gait. The forefoot (P Sw) is often the area of most dysfunction in people, due to the shape of the toe-box in most shoes, and also the area of the highest force and longest contact time. “How should I walk?” Is a common question we get. There has been an increase in popularity in forefoot-walking. However, this type of walking gait is only observed in healthy people when plantar sensory input is increased to point of pain through irregular surfaces. Forefoot walking demands more energy then a heel-to-toe gait, thereby making it a less desirable in...
What is a functional foot?
The human foot is remarkably ‘plastic’ and the habitual use of poorly designed or ill-fitting shoes can have a dramatic effect on the form and function of the human foot. The ‘unshod’ human foot (a foot that has never worn shoes) typically has a broad, flat forefoot and toes that are spread out and aligned with the metatarsal heads to give the foot a ‘fan-shape’. The habitually shod human foot (always in a shoe) has begun to adapt to the footwear being worn and has become ‘shoe-shaped’. A shoe-shaped foot has a narrow forefoot relative to the rear-foot, meta- tarsal...
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