Short foot with toes pressing down activates AbdH better than no toe press

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Clinicians know that foot strengthening can help with foot and other musculoskeletal problems but there is a lot of debate about how to go about this. One exercise commonly used for foot strengthening is the short foot exercise, but should the toes be relaxed or pushed into the ground during the exercise ?
A new paper helps to answer this by showing greater activity in the abductor hallucis when the short foot exercise is done WITH pushing the toes down that without .


A comparison of abductor hallucis muscle activation and medial longitudinal arch angle during nine different foot exercises


https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2024.06.008

 

Here are some images from the paper.
a. toe curls ,marble pick ups ext, is a non starter

b. short foot with toe press down activates the Abdh to a greater extent than strict short foot with relaxed toes. Another name for this is "doming" and it's not only a better exercise for the intrinsics but easier to learn.

c. toes spread out. Looks like toes spread and hallux pushed down to me , or a modified toe press.