Having flat feet usually causes pain in other areas like hips, knees, ankles, and even into
the lower back. It's often the reason why you might still have lingering pain in those areas,
even though you've already done something to treat it. And of course, it can cause
problems directly in the feet and in the ankles. In this video, I'm going to show you my five
favorite exercises for fixing pain from flat feet. Keep in mind that there's two types of flat feet,
there's a structural flat foot, where the foots always flat no matter what you do, even when you
take pressure off the foot, it's still flat, but then there's a functional flat foot, where
if you take pressure off the foot, like if your foots up in the air, and arch is kind of there.
But when you stand on your foot, the arts falls down and collapses. That's the flat
foot. The medical term for this is PES plainness in case your doctor may have told you have this,
the exercises in this video are primarily for somebody with a functional flat foot
the type that the arch comes up whenever you're not putting pressure on your foot,
although they can benefit a structural flatfoot. But a structural flatfoot needs special attention
you might need custom orthotics or custom insoles is another name for those. The first
exercise is toe curls with overpressure. The reason why we're doing toe curls is because
the root problem of a dropped arch or flat foot is that the toe curling muscles are too weak and
they're not supporting that arch of the foot. So the way to do this exercise is you're going
to cross your foot over your knee just like this, you have to do one set at a time. And
then with your hand, go ahead and grab your toes, bend your toes, as far as they'll go
comfortably. Because it can be uncomfortable, it can hurt, it can be quite a stretch to do this.
But you're going to be giving yourself over pressure with your own fingers to
get these knuckles right here that the knuckles within your foot to start to pop up a bit. Now,
if you're not flexible enough to do it, then just go with what you can comfortably.
And once you're in that position, now comes the actual exercise, it's just the setup,
you're going to try to keep your toes curled like that with the muscles of your foot.
But you're never going to let go of your fingers here, they're going to keep pressure on your
toes so that he can keep the toes in that flex position. So you can work your muscles in this
position. So go ahead and activate the muscles there. And we're going to hold it for 10 seconds,
you see he's kind of starting to let off a bit. That's what you kind of want to do. But you need
to keep your toes curled, because if you let off all the way, go ahead and get off
your toes kind of want to uncurl like that, and you're not exercising the muscles at their full
end range. So keeping your fingers on there with some pressure, it helps tremendously.
To get the strength as fast as possible in the in the end range of what it's what's possible
at the joints in your foot, you're going to want to hold this for 10 seconds at a time.
And then take a short break, and then repeat it 10 times in a row, you can do more than that.
And if you're not very comfortable with this exercise, because it's challenging for you,
you might start getting foot cramps, back off to the intensity that works for you
only do this as much as you can comfortably without getting foot cramps without causing
any popping or bad sensations in the foot. Now popping you might get the pop that actually
feels good, that's fine. I mean, popping like that's painful popping that creates
pain and stays there for a while. That's not a good thing. Now this exercise you're going to
want to do frequently every hour while you're awake is ideal. And do it as best as you can.
If you have a if you have responsibilities a job or things that you're doing throughout the
day where you just can't take off your shoe and do this, you can do this in your sock,
you don't have to be barefoot. Try to figure out a schedule that works best for you. I often
tell people that are working and they can't get their shoes off in the middle of their workday
to make sure you do plenty of this in the morning. And then go to work, of course. And then whenever
you get off of work, do it again, usually the evening or if you have a night shift.
Whenever you're not at work do this. And here's what it looks like on the other side,
you're just holding your foot in that position and don't progress into the other exercises,
this is already quite tiring for you. Because the next exercise, it's a version
of the toe curl. But you have to be able to go at least 90% of your full range of motion. If you
can't get your toes on their own to curl down all the way. This is all you have to do for a
while you might be doing this exercise for months. And that's just fine. It's what you need at this
point before you progress into harder exercises. An alternate way to do this so that you don't
have to reach your hands to your feet is to sit somewhere where your feet are on the ground. And
then go ahead and put your toes onto the ground under your foot and do it on both sides. Because
you can do this both sides at the same time. If you want it's aggressive to do it on both sides.
If you can't tolerate it just do on one side. And now you're using the ground the way you
would your hands over your toes. And you have to still curl your toes with the muscles that are
inside your feet that go and just do one side. Relax there for a moment. And then pick a side
do one side and then the tip here is you want to make sure your outer toes over here curl.
So you can lean your foot to the outside, if you're having trouble getting those little
toes to curl, very often, there's just one or two toes that don't curl down as much as the
other ones. And so you need to focus on those toes to make sure that they all been correctly,
because each toe has individual muscles go into it, that allow it to curl properly.
Another option is using a device like this called the yoga toes, I've put a link in the description
if you want to get some of these. And there's different varieties of these, these are just
the original yoga toes. But this helps you if your toes overlap. If you have like a bunion,
you know what your big toe is coming in, I'll show you on him. Like if your toes coming in like that.
Or if your toes are kind of overlapping on each other like this, you need, you need
to separate your toes, these are toe separators. And using these while doing the exercise can help
get into yoga toes on is a little bit challenging. But once you get them on, it aligns the toes with
the bones in the middle of the foot so that you can work your muscles properly.
So once you have it in place, they're going to give your hand over pressure there.
And it puts pressure on your toes. This isn't the most comfortable device to wear. But it
definitely helps alignment of the toes. And you just got to get that little one down. Yeah,
there you go. Good job. You don't have to wear this for very long.
But if you have those overlapping toes or a bunion problem, or a bunion net, the little toes coming
in words, then this is going to be something that you may want to add to your exercise. The second
exercise is toe curls without overpressure. So to do this exercise, you had to have already
been curling your toes with the overpressure. Or you can get your toes curled pretty much all
the way without needing the overpressure. So you would just take off your shoes,
of course in curl your toes all the way kick your foot out so that your heels like this. Yeah,
there you go. And then curl all the way he's got pretty good flexion here. Flexion means all the
toes are bending downwards. And I'm specifically looking for the knuckles that are right here.
Those joints right there are the same joints that are right here on the skeleton. And so
when you bend your toes, you want those to bend because as you can see, when you turn your foot,
just point your toes out that way, roll your whole leg over. Yeah, like that like that. There you go.
When he curls his toes, you automatically get a better arch in the foot, watch,
relax everything there, it locks the foot into an arch, go and do it again, which raises the arch.
Now this is a strengthening exercise. The next exercise is going to focus on putting this into
walking and standing. But this is an excellent exercise to be practicing in preparation to do
this with everyday activities so that you can cure your fallen arch your flat foot
naturally for the long term. You hold this for 10 seconds at a time and do 10 reps.
And hourly this would replace the version that you're doing where you're where you're holding
your toes with your hand, you would eventually work up to doing this one, you can still use a
yoga toes on the same exercise if you have the overlapping toes or crooked toes issue. And
that can help you out in strengthening your toes into a straighter position.
So that it's not a problem as you get stronger. And again be doing this hourly throughout the day
while you're awake. That's how frequently this needs to be done. It's not enough to do this
just a couple times a day three times a day, you need to be getting hundreds of reps in I mean if
you can get in at least 100 if not two or 300 reps a day as long as you can tolerate it that's key,
you have to build up your tolerance because the first time you start this exercise,
you might do it 20-30 times in a day. And that's all you can tolerate.
But as the days and weeks go by, you should be able to work up to doing this 100 times
a day or 200 200 times a day. That's the kind of strength you need to get that arch
up. If you think about it, that arch has to support your whole bodyweight. So you need a
lot of strength in these feet. And this should feel like a strenuous exercise for your foot.
But as soon as you let off and relax, you should be fine. There should be no lingering pain,
the lingering problems, just the fatigue of working out your foot muscles. The next exercise
is being able to toe grab in standing and then we're going to transfer that over to walking. So
right now he is not using any muscles in his foot and his arch is relatively low.
Now he doesn't have the flattest arch ever, but this is a slightly fallen arch. So when
he grabs with the toes, go ahead and grab. You see how that arch comes up right away. That's a
much better position for the foot to Bing and that's a natural arts development without the
use of an insole or an orthotic. And you can see what happens to is the shin bone right here and
the knee and all the way up into the hip. The bones just slightly turn out when the
arch comes up. So relax it and see how it collapses in subtly. Then create an arch
and it goes out and all he's doing to achieve that is flattening the toes down against the
ground. This strength that you've been working on by toe curling, too transfers
into this if you if you have good toe curling strength, then this becomes much, much easier.
They've got to do this in a way where you're the ball of your foot or this part right here,
the base of the big toe in the base of all the other toes down under the foot stays down, and
you're only bringing the arch part up right here. Now go ahead and face the camera with two feet.
Because you'd be able to do this with both feet, just showing you one side right there.
But go ahead and do it with both sides. And you can see how both knees rotate out a little bit.
So that takes pressure off the knees, it helps with meniscus problems, knee arthritis issues,
and all the way up into the hips, just get a higher view here. So go ahead and
relax everything first, can see how things collapse down and then go ahead and engage
them. And you can see the space that's opened up between his knees and thighs right there.
That improves the joint alignment at the hips, and it helps the lower back as well
to take that pressure off. So the feet are very much connected to the joints
above all the way to the low back. And it's not always just relying on insoles,
if you have a functional flat foot getting stronger in these muscles is hugely important.
And this needs to transfer into walking. So let's show you what that looks like.
The way to toe grab when you walk is when you put pressure onto a foot. So go ahead
and step forward the right foot right here, he's leaning more towards the right foot,
the toes should be starting to grab to create an arch right there. Meanwhile, this other foot is
going to come over and now that that right foot is going to relax his left foot, you can see
his toes grabbing, that's creating an arch. So every time you put pressure onto a foot,
you need to grab slightly with your toes to create an arch. Now go ahead and go down
another step and then turn around and come back slowly the way that you did.
So now just keep walking slowly. Yeah, like that. And just grab every single time with your toes.
And just turn around right there.
Each time you take a step, you should be curling your toes just a bit without curling your toes
under your foot, you're more so flattening them out. In order to create an arch. This needs to
become the way that you walk all the time. I mean, if you get up to go to the bathroom at night,
you should theoretically be doing this. If you're walking within your home going
from a bedroom to the kitchen or to the bathroom to the laundry room outside to check the mail,
whatever you're doing, you should be theoretically walking like this within your shoes.
Of course. Now this is more challenging to do if you're wearing shoes that don't have a heel strap,
where there's nothing that comes around the back of the heel. So like flip flops
or slippers or common ones. So you generally don't want to be wearing those too long.
But if you're going to be on your feet for a while, like if you're going to go to the store to
do a grocery store trip, or if you're going to go walking for exercise, or if you just have to be on
your feet for any time more than about 15 minutes. Doing chores around the house is another one,
you want to make sure you put on some supportive shoes. Ideally, something with an art support.
Or if you're working on doing this barefoot, that would be okay too, as long as you're okay
to be barefoot. But you have to be consistently grabbing with those toes every time we take a
step in order to support your arch naturally. The fourth exercise is doing heel raises,
but doing them in a way where your toes are grabbing. So go ahead and grab with your toes
there, you should feel the pressure go through your toe tips just a bit the if you're looking
at your toes, they should they should Blanche should turn kind of white like my fingers are
right here. And as long as you don't have any nail polish, your toe tips will Blanche like that.
And then holding your toes down, go ahead and hold them down, you're going to raise your heels. Yep,
and go all the way up as high as you can hold it there for 10 seconds. And you really need
to hold and think about getting as high as you possibly can. Because that'll make those toe
flexor muscles really work and strengthen. After 10 seconds, you can come on down.
Take a break as long as you need to typically just people need a few seconds. If you need
longer than that, that's fine. And then repeat it. And this now becomes an exercise that you're going
to do once a day you need to work towards being able to do 50 Even up to 100 reps.
But the nice thing is you're not doing this hourly, you're just going to do this once a
day. And you would progress to this exercise from the toe curl exercises that the first two that we
did in this video. Once you can curl your toes effectively, you feel like you've gotten good at
that you're not cramping your feet anymore. Now it's time to go do the heel raises to
strengthen even more. Grab with your toes always and go up as high as you can. You really have to
focus and dig deep to make sure that you're going up as poses as high as you possibly can. And not
just going up like 70 or 80% but go up 100% as high as you possibly can go up while still
grabbing with those toes just a little bit. The final exercise takes into account a muscle
called the posterior tibialis muscle which runs from the back of the lower leg right
here and it goes down through this weigh in, it attaches directly to the bottom of the arch,
this muscle helps your feet to kind of turn inwards. So we're going to
use this ball to do that kind of an exercise. So it's just a regular tennis ball. And you can
use virtually any kind of ball, I've linked in the description below a link from Amazon
to get tennis balls like this. They're cheap, you can get them for five to $10,
even at the store locally. But just to make it convenient, convenient for you go check it
out in the description below, then you're going to bring your feet closer together so that your
heels are already kind of pressing on the ball. And then the same toe grabbing that you did with
the other exercise you need to be able to do here. So grab with your toes before you lift
your heels. And then when you start to lift your heels, you have to bring your heels together to
maintain that ball right between your heels. Go ahead, whenever you're ready, you're going
to hold it there for 10 seconds, and you're working on not dropping the ball that you
might drop the ball, that's okay, just start over again, you'll practice and get better.
After a few reps of this, you should be able to do it while holding the ball every single time.
I've had people put a Kleenex box in there, they kind of find something at home to do I
had one person say they just take off their shoe and do with their shoe. That's fine too.
Just make sure that you're squeezing your heels together and grabbing your toes at
the same time. Because now you're working out all the muscles that help to support the arch.
Like the last exercise, you're working on getting up to 50 to 100 reps. You might even
just start with 10 or 20. And you can mix this in with the other one because this is a little
bit more intense. You might say, well, let me just do a few reps of this one. And then I'll go
back to the one without the ball where I'm just doing a normal here, raise with the toe grabs.
That's cool, too. Hey, keep in mind that you don't have to do all of these exercises at
the same time you're going to progress through them. Now the walking does need to happen all
the time. That's just a lifelong thing. That's how you have to walk constantly consistently.
Grabbing your toes no matter what you're doing. And if you're somebody with flat feet,
you just probably shouldn't be wearing flip flops. You probably need to always wear shoes that stay
on your feet securely so that you can consistently use your toes the way that I showed you in this
video. Give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Please share it with somebody you think needs
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on any of the helpful videos. We post each and every week. I'll see you in the next video. Bye