Strengthen your intrinsic foot muscles... they will thank you 👣
- Sally Blake
- Jun 12
- 3 min read
Feet! Love them or loathe them, these super important parts of our body are so often neglected. Whether you're a dancer, runner, gym junkie, power walker or just using your feet to get from A to B, learning to control your intrinsic foot muscles will make a difference to your performance.
Foot intrinsics are the small muscles that exist within our feet. In total there are 19 muscles within the foot that support the 26 bones and 33 joints that make up the foot. There are several layers of intrinsic foot muscles and they have an important role in stabilising the foot, supporting the arch structure of our foot, helping to absorb impact loading and disperse impact forces and they also help to generate the forces needed to propel the body forwards. So they are pretty busy little muscles!
Our feet are our foundations but these super important muscles are often neglected or in many cases not even known about. We often take the time to strengthen out other leg muscles so why forget about the feet? At Evolved Physio we incorporate assessment of foot muscle strength and patterns of foot loading into a lot of our assessments - not just the people presenting with foot pain. Lots of other lower limb injuries or patterns of dysfunction and pain stem from our feet.
Wearing shoes all the time means our feet don’t have to interact directly with the ground and this can lead to the small muscles within the foot become weaker and less adaptable and this can be a factor in many lower limb pain issues.
As kids we spent so much time barefoot - on the beach, on the grass, rock hopping or tree climbing. All these things build strength and dexterity in the foot as it needs to adapt to the changing surfaces and textures.
Driving a desk or walking around in tight fitting, hard soled or thick soled shoes all day does the exact opposite. That's not to say we all need to be barefoot all the time or all of a sudden - that can cause a seperate set of issues, but it's certainly beneficial to dedicate some specific time and effort to strengthening your feet.
Our postural habits can also affect our feet muscles ....Have you paid attention to where you stand on and load through your feet? Try it - you might be surprised what you find! Stand upright in bare feet, have the feet a comfortable width apart. March on the spot a few times and then come into your quiet standing posture. It might help to close your eyes for a few moments to really feel the ground under your feet.
Ask yourself these questions:
Is your weight more to the front or the back of your foot?
Are you more on the outside edge of your foot or do you collapse inwards?
Can you feel even pressure between your big toe and the little toe?
Do you have your weight evenly across both feet or it more on one foot?
If you have ever experienced foot pain after more in time in flat or low support footwear such as thongs, after taking a long walk on the beach bare foot, after a sudden change in footwear like new running shoes or going back into footy boots after the off season, or increases in the amount of load going through the feet such as training for a running event or long distance walking event - then you might have some intrinsic muscle weakness and you may benefit from some of these exercises.
We don't promise these exercises will come easily, or that you won't look a bit silly doing them! But we do think that you will be rewarded for the effort you put in with more robust and supportive foot. So, take some time to take the shoes off and give your feet some love with these - at times challenging but ultimately rewarding intrinsic foot exercises.
Evolved Physio is a welcoming and inclusive Physio clinic located in Kincumber, on the NSW Central Coast. Sally is an experienced Physio with a particular interest in treating an active sporting population with the aim to keep people doing what they love... after all isn't that what life is all about?
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