🔥WHY FOOT MOBILITY IS SO IMPORTANT
Your feet are the first place where energy gets transferred from the ground up your kinetic chain. Energy will be transferred differently and responded to differently based on how your feet can move and provide a stable or mobile base of support for the rest of your body.
The lack of mid foot mobility greatly affects how your joints deal with a load and how much muscles can activate. The 1st way the foot affects your muscle activation and joint mechanics is during a squat, the lack of foot mobility specifically closed chain supination. This is when the mid foot rotates outward, this motion causes the arch of the foot to tighten, and allows the tibia and femur to externally rotate together. During a squat this keeps the knees from collapsing and allows the glutes to be engaged fully keeping the knee stable.
A tight mid foot or an over-pronated foot will cause the tibia to lock up and won’t allow for external hip rotation. This can cause the knees to collapse inwards causing shearing force on the knee ligaments which is not a good thing. This is a big problem when it transfers over to running or jumping mechanics because the loads can be much greater.
A tight mid foot can be caused by many things, but most commonly lack of intrinsic foot muscle strength stiffening the joints, and tight external rotators. In the next post ill cover how to strengthen your foot muscles and increase foot mobility.
