Once upon a time, as running for health reasons became more popular, a group of experts got together and helped design shoes that made running easier. Unfortunately, they did not realise that their designs also made feet a lot weaker and so the foot health of entire nations deteriorated.
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At first the researchers denied any responsibility and claimed that their shoes did not impact the mechanics of the foot at all and that the foot was just as strong as it should be, but gradually other researchers showed this not to be the case and so the hunt was on for a way of putting strength back into people snoozing foot musculature.
Exercises like toe curls were used but dragging a towel towards you was found to achieve almost nothing . A world renowned fellow called Janda, invented a foot exercise called the "short foot exercise" but remarkably he failed to take into account the fact that toe flexors flex the toes! Other researchers encouraged people to do calf raises on an incline but again this was found to be entirely ineffective when it came to strengthening the intrinsic foot muscles.
Those who knew how important the foot muscles were to lower limb strength began to despair. They knew that a really effective strengthening exercise might have the ability to reduce falls in the elderly, compress morbidity in people suffering from debilitating foot conditions and even dramatically reduce injuries in recreational runners.
Eventually, a ground braking piece of research was carried out by Bruening ,Irene Davis et al 2019 and here is the key finding - If you stand favouring one foot and press your toes down you will activate intrinsic foot muscles like the abductor hallucis much more than toe curls will . However, if you place resistance in the form of an inelastic strap across the top of the foot and press the toes down, thereby levering the top of foot up against that inelastic resistance, then the activity in the abductor hallucis will be much greater than simply pressing your toes down. So at this point it was demonstrated that doming against some form of resistance was the way to target the intrinsics. To be continued .......
Below toe curl vs toe press vs doming Bruening et al
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