The Foot Mechanic

Men in Heels

Here is a NYTimes article about some fashionable young men wearing tall-tall shoes to parties and clubs in the city.

The problem is that usually men have tighter feet than women, so the male foot stubbornly resists the demands of high shoes.  I'm sure we can all agree that tall shoes are very demanding biomechanically.  If your feet can't negotiate with your tall shoes, a few things are likely to happen:  you fall down or you give up and take them off.  This is not acceptable!  Your shoes are way too cute for that!  You've got to develop flexibility in your feet and thank God I can show you how to do that. 

Of course, men wearing "women's" shoes is not new.  I've always adored the Trocks, the ballet company of men who dance in pointe shoes and in drag. You're welcome.

 

Do Certain Types of Sneakers Prevent Injuries? - NYTimes.com

Scientific rumblings about whether running shoes deliver on their promises have been growing louder in recent years. In 2008, an influential review article in The British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that sports-medicine specialists should stop recommending running shoes based on a person’s foot posture. No scientific evidence supported the practice, the authors pointed out, concluding that “the true effects” of today’s running shoes “on the health and performance of distance runners remain unknown.”

via well.blogs.nytimes.com

The problem with assessing your foot posture and then recommending a certain shoe type (cushiony/soft or supportive/rigid or middle-of-the-road) is that your static foot posture is not necessarily indicative of your foot rhythm in gait.  I tend to overpronate on my right foot and yet I have very high arches.  The shoe salesmen from this article would tell me I need a cushiony shoe because of my overpronation, and yet a rigid shoe for my high arches.  See?  Ridiculous. I'm proud of the researcher quoted at the end of the article because he recommends readers listen to their body and pick running shoes based on that.  Yay!  One point for our side!  Researchers don't usually recommend kinesthetic awareness because they like to measure things, and subjective thoughts are impossible to objectively measure.  

I'm barefoot most of the time because that's what Pilates instructors do, but when I do wear shoes I often pick my Vibram toe gloves.  I just wish they were flesh colored, because I'm 5'2" and wear a size 9 shoe.  I look like *$&%* Minnie Mouse.

 

Your foot is like a suction cup

I'm sure you remember the foot is constructed of arches (from the toes to the heel is the longitudinal arch and from the big toe to the little toe is the transverse arch).  Your weight depresses these arches slightly with every step, just like pressing down on the toilet plunger compresses and deforms the suction cup end.

Instead of sticking you to the floor, however, like this guy...

this spreading or widening of your foot is an energy absorber.  (But wouldn't it be cool to go up the sides of buildings like SpiderMan or a tree frog with your sticky suction-cup feet?)  

When you land a jump, your feet spread out for a couple of very sensible reasons: to distribute your weight over a wider area, to stabilize your landing, to maximally disseminate the landing force.  Don't believe me?  Then try jumping in stilettos. Have you ever tried on new shoes that felt great as long as you were sitting, but absolutely killed when you stood up? That's your transverse arch spreading out like a suction cup.

 It would seem therefore, that pointe shoes do not make any sense.  

 

Take them out of the box and they are very rigid.  They are made of cardboard and glue and covered in satin; some have a carbon-fiber shank in the sole to provide support and longevity to the shoe.  When they are new they are very supportive to the foot, but most uncomfortable. Each dancer has her own personalized method for softening up her pointe shoes: hammering, scraping, closing in a door, warming and reshaping, etc.  

When pointe shoes are new and stiff it is very difficult for the transverse arch to widen and flatten out and you feel it as compression.  Pointe shoes are at their peak in mid-life (just like people).  This is when they have softened enough to allow the toe box to widen a bit for the natural rhythms of the foot and yet not so soft that they can't provide the necessary support for dancing on the tips of your toes.  

You know all this already, though, from your own experience.  Your gut tells you that these Jimmy Choos

 
 

 will probably be more uncomfortable than these Keens

and now you know the biomechanical reason why. 

Gait cycle & the big toe

Every step you take moves through a gait cycle.  Look at the activity of the right foot:  half of the time you are standing on it (stance phase) or swinging it forward and preparing for the next step (swing phase).  The stance phase is made up of  the following events:  heel strike, foot flat, heel off and finally toe off.  Here's an illustration of the gait cycle.

When the foot moves through toe-off (that's the second leg to the right of the shaded leg in the above illustration), normally the big toe is the last bit to leave the ground.  The very last scrap of propulsion your body is going to get is going to come from this moment.  Do you think the big toe can provide much oomph for the rest of the body?  After all, it's not very big....

The big toe is ingeniously designed.  Its tendons are long and thin so that the belly of the muscle is located much higher up, in the calf.  This image is from Thieme's General Anatomy textbook.  It's the mostest awesomest anatomy book ever.  Go visit them at the winkingskull.com or buy it at amazon.

 

This illustration shows the muscle flexor hallucis longus (a long name like that describes the muscle - that is it flexes a joint, it's attached to the big toe, and it's very long) as well as some others.  To find the flexor hallucis longus, look at the base of the big toe and follow that gray tendon upward, behind the inside ankle bone and toward the outside of the calf muscle.  Look at how big the belly of that muscle is!  It's extremely powerful (or at least has the potential to be).  The larger the cross-section of the muscle, the more force it can generate.  As in:

 
Sorry, I got distracted there for a moment.  'K, look at his shoulder, that is the muscle belly of his deltoid.

 

 That's a muscle with a lot of potential for power, and it attaches directly to the bones it affects.  There's no long thin tendon attaching it to a bone far away.  The big toe's ingenious design allows our feet to be bony and light, and yet still have access to power.  Like a long extension cord!  If our feet had to pack the muscle in right on top of the bones, our feet would look like big pillows stuffed with sausages.  Ick.  Nothing fun like this would ever happen again:

Watch sprinters bursting out of the blocks at the beginning of a race; of course that power is coming from the posterior hips and thighs, but don't dismiss the contribution of the big toe and its flexor hallucis longus.  For dancers, this muscle is essential for jumps and releves.

  

 

Dance sneakers

I have a few Pilates clients now and then who have arthritis in their feet and do not tolerate the Feet in Straps series on the Universal Reformer very well because Pilates is usually done barefoot.  These dance sneakers can help.  They are lightweight and do not block the foot and ankle from pointing and flexing.  They are also great for jazz class or Zumba class. Available at discountdance.com. (Gail, these are the shoes I spoke of the other day in class.)

 
 

Just the thing for the stylish space cadet!

Would you splash through rain puddles in these?  Or just leap over moon rocks in sssllooooow mmmotiooooonnnnnn? 

I learned something there.  You can't indicate a slow speed in read-back with a sound like "-tion" because you would get a hard "t" sound rather than a "sh" sound.  And that would sound ridiculous.  "sssllloooowww mmmmooooottttiiiiooooonnnnn".  That doesn't make sense at all.

Hello.  I'll be your annoying friend today.  Would you like to talk about alliterative devices or onomatopoeias now?  No?  Okay, I'll just sit quietly in my chair here.  But I'll be right here waiting for the time when you are ready for that conversation.

Hummm, mmm, hummm, hummm....

Am I alone in here?

Whee! Rain boots by Pucci!

I'm pretty sure I saw these as a kid as part of the uniform for Tomorrowland workers in 1973 Disneyland.  The rest of it looked something like this:

Fashion Week - Oscar de la Renta Spring 2010 Shoes

Me want!  Gasp!  Me so so want!  Where the hell would I wear them though?  In the Pilates studio?  To my son's cub scout meetings?  You can see it all here.

 

Fitflop

I've had a pair of Fitflops for a little over a year and I really like them.  I just discovered (and love) their Electra Sandal  - so damn cute!!  Fitflops are on the fitness while walking bandwagon, like MBTs or Skechers' new Shape-Ups.  The Fitflop sole is composed of different densities of foam to imitate the destabilizing effects of a wobble board.   I've worn mine quite a bit, although I don't notice any extra muscular effort in the legs or glutes.  The only negative thing about them is that my foot is very narrow and these only come in medium widths, so the instep banding hovers over the top of my foot by about a half-inch.  My feet look like skinny bananas.  But they certainly are cute and comfortable (the Fitflops, that is) and the fitness effects may be occurring under the proprioceptive radar.  Besides, what a great name:  Fitflop.  It makes me think of other possibilities like:

FitGlop:  a simple glucose replacement to use for endurance sports. (Like Gu.)

FitSlop:  your ex-boyfriend's nasty t-shirt and old shorts work-out outfit.

FitPop:  popcorn cakes with only 2 calories each (has that one already been done?)

Barefoot Running

The New York Times has a nice article in today's paper about the current thoughts on barefoot running and the chagrin of the shoe manufacturers.

The article also mentions the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall which I read earlier this year.  It's about the multiple injuries suffered by the author that drove him to discover the running style of the Tarahumara, a native Mexican-desert dwelling population.  Running essentially barefoot, the Tarahumara are like a human gazelle/mountain goat and beat the pants off most competitors, especially in Ultramarathons like this one.  (McDougall's book does spend a lot of time cooing over ultramarathoning and its stars.  A little tedious for me, but surely a lovefest for those in the sport.)

If you've ever studied foot biomechanics (I promise you I am really a treat at cocktail parties.  Really. I  don't bore anyone.) you know there is a moment called footstrike or heelstrike when the heel initially touches down on the ground to begin a new step.  In barefoot running (or gladiator-sandal running, or Chalcolithic-sandal running, etc) the foot doesn't strike with the heel, but with the mid-foot.  This is essential for foot safety if you don't have any external cushioning on the foot.  Only some of the shock-absorption capacity is in the heel; it can accommodate the energy/shock from walking, but not the increased impact forces from running.  As a result, barefoot running is more upright than running in Nikes or Asics or whatever cushioned shoe you've got.

 Here are Nike's Zoom Mawler Track and Field shoe.  Look at the rearfoot area:  it's thin with very little shock absorbing material there.  Sprinters spend no time on their heels.  Go to 1:12 and watch the slow-motion of the sprinter's feet.  Their weight is not in their heels.

To me, the next question is do barefoot sprinters go faster than modern-technology sprinters, or is this paradox only applicable to endurance runners?  I'm wondering if the Tarahumara put spikes on their sandals would it increase their speed?

--Donna