Teaching foot strengthening exercises the easy way

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Foot strengthening has been the subject of a lot of research papers recently and is becoming a key element in the practice of podiatry.

Teaching foot strengthening exercises can be frustrating for pupil and teacher alike and, after 10 years of trying to get people to use the novabow foot exercise device properly, I believe I know how to teach doming in about 3 minutes flat.

The key is to realise that foot doming ( and the short foot exercise) use both the intrinsic and extrinsic foot muscles and so the best way to teach doming is to split the exercise in to 2 parts then merge them . Do it properly and it works just about 100% of the time and, off goes a better educated client.

If you want to learn the method it can be found about 2 minutes into this video and if you take the time to learn ( about 3 minutes), teaching strengthening in practice will become just about the easiest and least time consuming thing you do. You don't need a novabow to do this exercise.

The video concerns the novabow system and so the link may get disabled (fair enough), so you may need to copy and paste .

 

Foot doming is by no means an intrinsic foot muscle only exercise. You will also be targeting tib ant, tib post and the peroneals . For older people, extensive foot/ankle exercise regimes are unlikely to be followed, but doming is easy .

I often wonder if the foot performance improvements seen in research papers involving the short foot exercise are more about the foot extrinsics than the foot intrinsics.

Toe flexion ( doming ) is the best of all the foot exercises IMO. Ankle no, foot yes.

One last thing. Foot isometrics, like the short foot exercise, may increase strength but do they increase power ? An athlete can get stronger and slower at the same time. Some muscles in the foot are designed for rapid contraction ie flexor digitorum brevis .

I believe some French researchers may recently have run into this strength/ power problem.

 

Effective foot doming has always been seen as difficult to teach hence the apparatus outlined below . But if you teach it as outlined in the video in post 1 ( method starts about 2 mins into video) it is actually pretty easy.
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Feasibility of the Archercise biofeedback device to strengthen foot musculature
Article
Full-text available

• Dec 2020

• Penelope Latey
• John Eisenhuth
• Marnee McKay
• [...]
• Joshua Burns

Background: Foot muscle weakness can produce foot deformity, pain and disability. Toe flexor and foot arch exercises focused on intrinsic foot muscle strength and functional control may mitigate the progression of foot deformity and disability. Ensuring correct exercise technique is challenging due to the specificity of muscle activation required...