We're back with a little movement for your weekend ahead!
In November I posted a breath exercise and explained briefly how your breath might be affecting your posture and specifically causing hip flexor tightness. I wanted to continue on the same line today - by talking about our feet and giving you a super simple foot exercise that you can do anywhere.
(If you missed the Breath exercise you can catch up here)
Scroll down for the exercise, or read on for a brief explanation of how your feet connect to your breath.
The bottom of your feet (aka the arch muscles) are the base of the fascial (connective tissue) line that is often referred to as the Deep Frontal Line. This line includes our two big muscles we talked about in the breath exercise: the Psoas (the big hip flexor) and the Diaphragm.
The Deep Frontal Fascial Line runs up through “the core” of your body and also includes your inner thigh muscles (the adductors), pelvic floor, Quadratum Lumoborum (the QL), and the tongue (in addition to the Psoas and the Diaphram). Some fascial models also include the deep abdominals and deep rotator muscles of the hip (the most famous or infamous of those is the Piriformis).
When I say “the core” of the body to describe this, I’m literally meaning the deep insides of your body, the inner parts of your legs and inner muscles of the pelvis and rib cage. This is not entirely the same definition of core that most Pilates folx would use.
In any case, now you know how it’s all connected in case you were curious. The reason I think it’s interesting to know this is because I find that pain is often a result of this line not functioning together very well. Individual muscles might be strong, and you might be able to do all the hundreds, and roll ups and teaser versions known to man, but you might still be experiencing back pain. Or sciatica type of pain (which is a real pain in the butt). Or plantar fasciatis. I could go on, but you get the point.
And since our feet are literally the base of our bodies that moves us through space it’s nice to give them a little love! Plus waking up this fascial line can help line up our bodies better for a more effecient posture - thus minimizing our chances of pain.
I could go on and on about this topic forever but I’ll leave it here for now. Maybe I’ll be back at a later date with more…
But for now, I hope you know just a bit more about how your bottom of the foot connects to your hip flexors and breath, and for that matter your tongue. The body is magic!
And now it’s time to move!
Set up:
Stand with your feet about a fist distance from each other making sure all ten toes are pointing directly forward.
Foot Exercise:
Keep the ball of the foot planted on the ground then lift all ten toes off the ground (getting the pinky toe off as much as possible).
Hold the toes up for 5 counts. Repeat 5-10 times.
Repeat the same movement but this time tap the toes rhythmically 20 times.
I’ll leave this here for now. I hope you give the exercise a try and if you do, please let us know how it went!
Thanks for reading and I look forward to getting the next movement nugget to you soon!
