Build Strong Feet: Exercises To Strengthen Your Foot & Ankle
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A lot depends on the health of our feet, especially when it comes to their strength and stability. But they often get quite neglected, when it comes to maintenance. Here’s how to help your feet keep the rest of your body in good condition:
On a good footing
The foot-specific exercises recommended here include:
- Active toe flexion/extension: curl and extend your toes
- Active toe adduction/abduction: use a towel for feedback this time as you spread your toes
- “Short foot” exercise: create an arch by bringing the base of your big toe towards your heel
- Resisted big toe flexion: use resistance bands; flex your big toe while controlling the others.
- Standing big toe flexion (isometric): press your big toe against an inclined surface as forcefully as you can
- Foot bridge exercise: hold your position with the front part of your feet on an elevated surface, to strengthen the arch.
- Heel raises: which can be progressed from basic to more advanced variations, increasing difficulty
- Ankle movements: dorsiflexion, inversion, etc, to increase mobility
It’s important to also look after your general lower body strength and stability, including (for example) single-leg deadlifts, step-downs, and lunges
Balance and proprioceptive exercises are good too, such as a static or dynamic one-leg balances, progressing to doing them with your eyes closed and/or on unstable surfaces (be careful, of course, and progress to this only when confident).
For more on all of these, an explanation of the anatomy, some other exercises too, and visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Steps For Keeping Your Feet A Healthy Foundation
Take care!
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Bulletproof Squat: Flow That Improves Depth & Stability
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Marina Sarenac, mobility coach, shows how to get there:
Let’s get down to it
First of all, we must register our astonishment about this:
❝A few months ago, I couldn’t even hit parallel in my squats. My hips felt tight, weak, and painful.❞
How did this happen? She is a mobility coach; what went wrong?! Was she injured? She doesn’t mention an explanation.
She does go on to say:
❝And honestly, I almost gave up on squats completely. But then I found a simple flow of four exercises that changed everything. My hips opened up, my depth improved, and now I feel stronger and even more stable than ever. And I’m going to show you exactly how you can do it, too.❞
So, maybe, notwithstanding the use of the word “honestly”, it’s possible there was actually a little dishonesty there; that is to say: perhaps she is telling a story she hopes will be relatable in order to get people on board and understand that they can do it too. This is sometimes called “the advertising hero’s journey”, as it’s often used in long-form ads for things, telling “I, dear reader, was just like you, and…” explaining what they were getting wrong, how they learned better, how it changed their life, and how you can do it too, for the low low price of whatever they’re selling.
However! Whether her story is true or not, the exercise are good, so here they are:
- Bear rock: you’ve heard of classic rock, glam rock, and punk rock; now here’s bear rock! Or rather, a bear rock-back. Focus on putting your hips backwards, like you’re rocking into the bottom of a squat. Feel the stretch in your adductors and keep your spine natural.
- “World’s greatest stretch” with a jump switch: step into a deep lunge, put your elbow on the floor, open your chest and put your hand up, then switch sides with a jump.
- Cossack squat with internal hip rotation: set your feet well part, and squat down with one leg or the other, creating a lung-like result, holding a weight in front you (a kettlebell is great for this, but any medium-sized manageable weight is fine) to work that internal hip rotation.
- Squat-knee-hinge flow: start in the lowest squat you can currently do, shift into a kneeling position, then hinge your hips back, and repeat.
For more on all of these plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
The Secret To Better Squats: Foot, Knee, & Ankle Mobility
Take care!
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Blackberries vs Elderberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing blackberries to elderberries, we picked the elderberries.
Why?
It was super-close! But…
In terms of macros, blackberries technically have more protein, but the numbers are truly tiny, and let’s face it, nobody is eating blackberries for the protein. Meanwhile, elderberries have more fiber and carbs. We consider this a win for elderberries, based on total fiber and total macronutrients, but if you want to consider the carbs and fiber against each other, you might want to call this round a tie.
In the category of vitamins, blackberries have more of vitamins B5, B9, E, K, and choline, while elderberries have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, and C. Thus, a tie here.
When it comes to minerals, blackberries have more copper, magnesium, manganese, and zinc, while elderberries have more calcium, iron, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, adding up to marginal win for elderberries.
Looking at polyphenols, both are great but elderberries have more (mostly anthocyanins, whence the color, but also quercetin, and in both cases blackberries are good but elderberries have so much more).
Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for elderberries (grow them in your garden if you can, as stores don’t often sell elderberries), but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Herbs For Evidence-Based Health & Healing ← elderberry significantly hastens recovery from upper respiratory viral infections 😎
Enjoy!
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Unbreakable: A Woman’s Guide to Aging with Power – by Dr. Vonda Wright
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The author, an orthopedic surgeon and longevity specialist, puts the focus on a) women b) musculoskeletal health.
Because, while when thinking about hormones and health a lot of people focus on visible things like hair and nails and such, when it comes to the effects of untreated menopause, let’s face it: more people die from the consequences of a broken hip than from a broken nail.
So, she wants us to avoid the train of sarcopenia → osteopenia → osteoporosis → fractures → infections → death, by reducing our risk factors early, and staying more robust and biologically younger.
She advises doing this in four main ways:
- Exercise: because stronger muscles mean stronger bones, and the impact on metabolic health is important too
- Nutrition: nourishing our muscles and bones, looking after our gut microbiome, and eliminating inflammation
- Supplements: mostly things we can’t reasonably get from diet, such as senolytics that tackle aging on a cellular level
- Lifestyle: in ways not already covered by the above three methods, so now we’re adding such things as sleep, stress management, and so forth.
- This may sound like an optional add-on, but the reality is that our body can’t do the other things properly if we don’t also have this in hand.
With these things in order, she argues, we can reasonably expect to go from strength to strength, rather than the decline that most people experience in later years.
The style is light and personable easy-reading pop-science, with minimal jargon, and any necessary terms explained. After a respectable bibliography, there are also appendices with exercise protocols, recipes, and a how-to guide for managing pain and injury.
Bottom line: if you are a woman and/or care about a woman, the contents of this book are something you should know inside-out, because it’s that important.
Click here to check out Unbreakable, and make yourself as unbreakable as humanly possible!
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Thinner Leaner Stronger – by Michael Matthews
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.
In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.
The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.
As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.
The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).
The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.
A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.
The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.
Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.
Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!
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Stretching Scientifically – by Thomas Kurz
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People stretching incorrectly can, even if they don’t injure themselves, lose countless hours for negligible flexibility gains, and put the failure down to their body rather than the method. You can have better.
This book’s all about what works, and not only that, but what works with specific goals in mind, beyond the generic “do the splits” and “touch your toes” etc, which are laudable goals but quite basic. A lot of the further goals he has in mind have to do not just with flexibility, but also functional dynamic strength and mobility, because it’s of less versatile use to have the flexibility only to get folded like laundry and not actually actively do the things you want to.
He does also cover “regardless of age”, so no more worrying that you should have been trained for the ballet when you were eight and now all is lost. It isn’t.
As for the writing style… The author, a physical fitness and rehabilitation coach and writer, wrote this book while at the Academy of Physical Education in Warsaw during the Soviet period, and it shows. It is very much straight-to-the-point, no nonsense, no waffle. Everything is direct and comes with a list of research citations and clear instructions.
Bottom line: if you’ve been trying to improve your flexibility and not succeeding, let this old Soviet instructor have a go.
Click here to check out Stretching Scientifically, and stretch scientifically!
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What To Do About Hand/Wrist Pain
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
No question/request too big or small 😎
❝Just lately I seem to be having increasing pain in my hands or rather especially in my wrists, but I don’t think anything has changed that logically should cause this, I don’t know if it is arthritis, but is there some way to nip it in the bud either way? I don’t want to do the wrong thing and make it worse❞
Our condolences for your hands/wrists, and to the latter part, a worthy pair of goals!
A lot of people underestimate the value of:
- Catching things early (prevention is not only better than cure, but also, it’s often a lot easier too!)
- Avoiding unnecessary iatrogenic damage*
*That’s a fancy way of saying “making things worse by trying to make them better”; it’s used when, for example, medical treatment intended to improve something makes things worse. It’s also used for when that’s an unavoidable/acceptable collateral damage, e.g. surgery, but even then, it’s still considered an inherently bad thing that the onus is on medical professionals to reduce as much as possible. Sometimes, though, it’s even worse and is just a case of “the wrong treatment was prescribed and now things are worse than before / worse in a new and interesting way”.
With regard to “nipping it in the bud” as you put it, you’ve done the first step already (paying attention to your body’s own alarm bells!).
- The next step is research (yes, asking us counts as part of that, so well done), and
- …a very wise step after that is enlisting relevant professional support (this one comes after the first one, because otherwise how will you know what is the relevant professional support?)
For what you describe, a physiotherapist is likely your best first port-of-call, as whether or not it’s arthritis, it’s very likely they can figure out whether or not it’s within their own field of expertise to treat, and if not, direct you to the correct professional (e.g. perhaps a rheumatologist or some other specialist).
In contrast, if you were to go to a medical doctor as your first port-of-call, then that’ll still usually be better than doing nothing (and they may well refer you to a physio anyway), but doctors have an unfortunate reputation for such approaches as“take two of these and
call me in the morningmake another appointment to check up on how that worked in a couple of weeks”.In other words, they are very likely to try to address the symptom and then if the symptom (e.g. pain) is managed, not worry about the cause.
As for not making things worse, honestly, if you follow the above parts first, that is less likely.
For some things you might consider trying, however, do check out our previous main feature: 7 Essential Devices For Hand Arthritis: Regain Control of Your Life
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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