Protecting your feet is an important step in stabilizing your spine, body and health!

Every day you walk or stand on your feet for extended periods, yet you most likely overlook the importance of your feet and the support they receive.  Every step you take immediately sends forces to the ankles, calves, knees, and hips that will extend all the way through your spine.

When you exercise with running, jogging and jumping the impact increases significantly.  A BBC News article states, “…champion male sprinters can hit the ground with a force that’s around 2.5 times their body weight (most people manage around two times).”  Read the entire article:   Will we ever… run 100M in under nine seconds?

More injuries are likely with the additional forces placed upon the feet during exercise especially when they are not supported properly.  The feet need proper footwear for different activity levels because our feet are the initial point of contact for most exercises.

Lets take a look at some activities:

Running – A great deal of stress is placed on the body every time you stride and the foot makes impact with the ground.  Whether you land on the balls of your toes or heel strike first, the impact on your feet while running is increased with the amount and frequency of impact.  The entire foot needs to be supported for these different types of gait, providing stability of the 3 ligaments that make up the arch of the foot and the shifting balance of the foot.  Proper support will ease the impact you experience that puts pressure on the feet, ankles, knees, hips, other joints and discs in the spine as you add up the miles you jog or run.  The correct support in your footwear reduces the stress on the body and soreness you can experience from exercise.

Exercise in the Gym – Many people go to the gym and more are getting into high intensity interval training and crossfit as they are total body workouts.  These new crazes hitting the fitness world involve quickly shifting the body, rapid jump movements and pivoting.  Your body relies on the feet for optimal balance, stability and posture, especially to ensure correct form and injury prevention.  The feet are stressed at many angles from these forms of activity, so your sneakers need to provide stability of your feet.  If you are involved in this type of exercise, you have to make sure your sneakers aren’t too soft or cushioned as it won’t provide even support and will reduce the stability you are given.

Not only are your feet different from everybody else in size and structure of the arch but your two feet are different from each other.  Then take into account how different your activity level is from every other person, it is important to get the right fit for EVERY situation.

Athletes and weekend warriors can control posture and stability during their workouts by combining the proper footwear with individually designed Stabilizing Orthotics.  This not only helps prevent injuries, but optimizes your overall performance.

If you take care of your feet, it will help take care of other parts of  your body and help to avoid common exercise injuries.  It’s a chain reaction when your feet are not properly supported.  View the picture to the right to see what happens when your feet are not balanced.  The arches start to drop at just 5 years of age and one side will usually drop more than the other.  This is just like driving a car with misaligned wheels:  the tires wear out unevenly, the car will most likely pull to one side, parts start wearing out, fuel efficiency drops, expenses to fix and repair damages increase.

Over time, just imagine how much stress is building on all the joints above your feet.  Then add the impact of exercise and it exponentially increases, causing the joints to wear down more quickly, degeneration, foot pain, knee pain, hip pain, low back pain and even leads to neck pain.

In our Freehold Chiropractic office, Hometown Family Wellness Center, we utilize chiropractic adjustments of the spine as well as the extremities (ankle, feet, knees and hips) and Foot Leveler’s Spinal Pelvic Stabilizers to help bring your body back to its natural state of alignment.  Using state of the art technology, we scan your feet to show you the imbalances of your feet and how severe your risks to injury are due to pronation of the feet, then the scan is used to build your custom fitted pelvic stabilizers.  This not only helps support your feet and prevent injuries, but it helps our patients hold their adjustments longer by stabilizing the foundation of the body.  Our goal is to correct the underlying cause of your pain and instability as quickly as possible and help prevent future problems down the road.  For further information about Freehold NJ Chiropractor, go to www.chiropractorfreehold.com or call our office at 732-780-0044 for a consultation and complimentary foot scan.