Dooley Noted: 3/2/2016
This week, I’ve watched some wobbly feet on many squat patterns.
I observed the bevy of compensations for poor foot stability, ranging between the following:
1. Excessive external foot rotation at the ankle, locking the calcaneus into some phase between eversion and inversion
2. Medial knee collapse (genu valgus), for a foot that can’t pronate
3. Lateral knee overcompensation (pushout), because of attempting to correct genu valgus
4. General lack of tripod foot stability with toes and metatarsals leaving the ground at various points
5. Spinal, hip, and shoulder overcompensations, in every direction imaginable, for improper foot cueing
You evolved to be bipedal. Therefore, your foot evolved right with you.
You have thousands of movement receptors on the bottom of your foot.
You also have, on average, 28 bones in your foot to accommodate the movement sensations provided by our foot-to-brain connections.
So, it’s time to take off your shoes when you squat. This way, your foot can feel where you are in space and send up cues accordingly.
You have six physiological joints of the mid and hindfoot:
1. Subtalar joint: calcaneus + talus.
2. Talocalcaneaonavicular joint: one total socket for condylar joint movement
3. Calcaneocuboid joint
– Helps form the midtarsal joint with #2, a saddle joint
4. Great tarsal joint: navicular + lateral cuneiform + medial cuneiform + second and third metatarsal bases
– This massive, capsule-free joint is walked by ligaments, with the bones sharing synovial fluid
5. Joint made between the fourth and fifth metatarsal bases and cuboid
6. Joint made between the first metatarsal base and medial cuneiform
I will break these down in more detail in future posts – because wow, is it too much for one Dooley Noted!
We can’t leave out the five metatarsal-phalangeal joints and 9 interphalangeal joints. These provide mobility, stability, and strength of the toes, relative to the midfoot.
Arguably, you have 20 physiological foot joints. These joints are cued by the positioning of the heel, first and fifth metatarsals, creating a stable geometric structure: a triangle.
So, your foot is complex.
And your body receives cues from how and where the foot hits the ground.
You can’t move what you can’t cue.
So if the foot is too stiff or too wobbly, you can’t send cues within the foot to each physiological joint.
This complicates the cues ascending up the kinetic chain, leaving your body to create proximal compensations for distal traffic jams.
The better quality the foot movement, the better the cues the rest of the body receives.
When you lose your tripod of foot stability, you direct forces on bones that are not as stable as the tripod.
The squat is then compromised.
If your heel, great toe, or fifth toe are leaving the ground during your squat, something up the kinetic chain will have to pay the price.
Maybe it’s your knee.
Maybe it’s your hip, low back, or opposite side shoulder.
So, if you are hitting a squat plateau or have discomfort in the squat, perhaps you should start from the ground up.
Get your feet assessed and corrected.
There’s no magic bullet. See and learn how the foot affects the ascending kinetic chain.
It could be the difference between a comfortable, strong squat and an inevitable injury or plateau in the squat.
And please – be like a Catalyst SPORT player and take off your shoes.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley