The foot 1

I’ve seen an increase in foot pain, self diagnosed plantar fasciitis, poor trainer choice (in my opinion) and heard a lot about how people are changing their running style because they’ve heard off the neighbour’s cat about barefoot running etc etc so before people get carried away, I’m going to put a few posts out about how the foot works, what can help or prevent it working and stuff I might think of on the way. I’ll break them down and put a post out each day so you can take it in easier.
This is all opinion and info that I have gleamed myself, however, I firmly believe that most experts don’t know their arse from their elbow ,whatever their subject matter and people only listen to them because another so called expert has deemed them to be an expert! Quite often their teacher or somebody who would lose face and credibility to say that they haven’t done their job properly in teaching them!
Make your own deductions and choices, but make educated choices….and do a bit of thinking for yourself!!

To start with, here are 2 pictures of arches.

arch arch 2
A properly designed and built arch can be indestructible. It is made up of many pieces, or stones, that all fit together. As each piece fits to the next, and gravity or pressure acts on it pushing it down, that stone will support the stones to either side of it and will fit together very strongly. The more pressure you apply from above the better!! It will just disperse the pressure. The last stone to go into an arch, is the one at the top which holds it all together. It is called the ‘keystone’.
Now imagine the consequences, if rather than applying pressure from above the arch, to keep it strong and operating as it should, you somehow applied pressure from below as demonstrated by the red arrow in the picture on the right. If you applied enough pressure over enough time, the keystone would become loose and the arch would lose all of it’s strength and structure. You’re left with a load of old stones which on their own would be useless.
Not that bad if you just had an arch on it’s own, but imagine if that arch was above the front door on your house. If it was to lose it’s strength and structure there, your house could easily collapse. 1 key component can either make the house or break the house!
Get a builder in quick!!

See next part

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