Have you seen our new blog??? Check out The Pilates Exercise of the Day Blog. When you click on
the link you may notice, “Wow July is an entire month of foot and ankle
exercises…hmmm” You might have
allowed a few questions to pop into your head. Should I do each of these everyday? OR isn’t pilates about core
strength? What do my feet have to
do with my core? Well the next few
blog posts are to serve as your recipe cards for July’s foot and ankle
exercises, and hopefully the rest of this post will answer why foot
and ankle exercises are important to Pilates, and more importantly, this recipe
and the many recipes to come, will make the Exercise of the Day Blog more
practical and useful to all of us!
To answer the first question, Should I do each of these
exercises everyday? If only we all
had the time, Right? Yes, it would
seem slightly ridiculous to do 30 foot and ankle exercises per day, and of
course some of the exercises might seem a little bit redundant. To help you create your own ankle
workout, I have divided the exercises into a few groups, and I have a few
suggestions on how to create a workout that is specific to your goals and
needs. Read the next few posts and
you’ll get a sense of how important the feet are to me. They are our foundation, our connection
to the earth, and our brakes. They
keep us safe, and the move us forward.
Yay! for the feet!
Foot and Ankle
Agility
When I think about foot and ankle agility, I am reminded of
the fact that our feet are in shoes almost all of the time. We never run around in the dirt like we
did when we were kids. The
calluses on our feet are from shoes not monkey
bars. Our toes are beginning to
squish together. This is not
helpful to our feet or the rest of our bodies. Yet, when our feet lose agility and
little problems pop up, instead of taking our feet out of shoes, we add
orthotics to the mix. Let’s shift
the paradigm… Let’s get the feet moving, and maybe just maybe the world will
change (Think I am exaggerating for effect? Think again!!)
Imagine your foot as a spring that takes in the shock of
each step and disperses it through the rest of the body. What happens if the number of different
fascial pathways from the foot to the rest of our body becomes limited? The
body will be absorbing shock that is dispersed over a limited area instead of a
vast and flexible web of fascia. Joints might get more wear and tear and begin to
degrade? How does your heel
feel? What about the inside of your
knee? What about your low back or
neck? The list of foot agility
exercises below is by no means complete, but it is a place to start. Check out these links, and pick your
favorites. You could do each
exercise every day, or you could vary it from day to day. This is your body and the exercises you
do are your choice…Give your feet the freedom to move and improve!
Just to clarify, I am not on a crusade to rid the world of
orthotic inserts. I am on a crusade to get the feet moving in all
directions. Let’s tap the toes,
Let’s spread the toes. Let’s
scrunch them, twist them, and spiral them, Let’s do everything we can to pick
up tiny little objects. Ready set
go! Let’s make agile feet!
You'll notice that today is July 25th and there are more foot agility exercises to come! Consider checking out the Pilates Exercise of the Day Blog tomorrow! And of course later this week come back to this blog to see the recipe cards for Ankle Strength, Ankle Flexibility, and Balance Improvement!
Katrina Hawley C.M.A, R.S.M.E
Co-Director The Pilates Studio
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