Your First STEPS to Strong Feet!
Two exercises that you can do EVERY DAY for CHEAP to get started on foot health!
So you follow me on Twitter & see me constantly posting pictures of my stupidly strong feet
(Or you’ve found my secret NFT collection LMFAOO, buy one then u pervert)
& you’re wondering, how do I get that toe spread? How do I get that nice foot arch? HOW DO I GET THOSE STRONG FEET, FIGHTER!? HOW!??!?!?
It’s only natural, your feet call to RVTRN to optimal health. Don’t worry, to a certain extent (as with all things) your own feet can be fixed up too! Of course, this is within reason. As always, you should see a foot specialist if you need to. I am no doctor. Just a simple Beast Monk.
It will just take some time, some patience & a little bit of effort. But if you put that work in you can start to get feet with GREAT spread & strong arches like this:
(My feet are incredibly strong & they aren’t even anywhere near I want them. Work in progress, always. Remember this.)
Materials Needed:
Lacrosse Ball/Base Ball (5-7 Bucks)
Toe Spreaders (“Optional” but HIGHLY recommended) (I got mine 7.95 on Amazon)
Legs/Feet
Arms/Hands
WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST STEPS?
We don’t need to overcomplicate things. Walk before you can run and all that, yea?
The beauty of training your feet is that it is SIMPLE & requires minimal equipment. You may not even have to buy anything at all. Got a lacrosse ball at home or a baseball? You’re set.
You don’t have one? They are five bucks or so on Amazon or any sporting goods store. If you really refuse to buy one & you live in a neighborhood with kids or near a high school, chances are you can find one in the grass somewhere. But just buy one, don’t be a NGMI.
These first steps are the first exercises I started out with. But I should also say, I approached foot health kind of dumb. Before I started doing these, I just off rip started walking barefoot on pavement mostly but also grass & dirt (not probem, pavement yes) for an hour a day. Not suggested, don’t do this. Build your feet up first. Stick to grass & dirt, soft surfaces at first.
These exercises start to build your foundation. Let’s get into them! NOTE: THERE IS A VIDEO EXAMPLE OF ALL EXERCISES AT END OF POST.
LAX BALL ROLLOUT
I do this one on average 3 times a day. The first being right when I wake up. The second being in the mid day, also any time my feet feel stiff. The third being right before bed.
I aim for 2 minutes per foot each time that I do it.
We roll our feet out in order to loosen up the Plantar Fascia on the bottoms of our feet. In the future I am going to write out a VERY detailed post on the entire anatomy of the foot & ankle. For the sake of this post, just know bottom of foot has muscles that play role in toe movement & range of motion.
But they often get very stiff due to the shoes we wear. This is why we roll the feet.
Now, I’m not gonna front with you. Rolling your feet out is going to be uncomfortable first. It’ll hurt a bit. Your feet are very much not used to having those muscles worked out. Suck it up though & start taking better care of your feet!!!!!
How do?
Simple. Put the ball under your foot. Roll.
I want you to apply reasonable downward pressure onto the ball, one foot at a time & roll the ball around the bottom of your feet. You can make small circles, you can move around sporadically, but do it with some control.
Make sure you get THE ENTIRE FOOT IN. Bottom, heel, ball, knife edges (the interior knife edge (Hallux) is so important, I really can not understate the importance of that spot specifically), ankles, toes, all of it.
The ankle is tricky, but I’ve found that thru playing around with it, you’ll find an angle that you can get to it.
After I do the full foot, I’m also gonna do about 30 seconds of each of these:
First being putting my 3 middle toes on the ball, big toe & pinky off the ball (on the ground) & elevating my heel lightly. The second being putting my big toe on the ball & the other 4 toes off the ball (on ground) & elevating my heel lightly. This starts to work a bit more on the ball of your foot as well as the strength of your toes.
So you’ve gotten 2 minutes or so in on each foot? GREAT! Let’s move to exercise two to balance out our routine with the top of the foot.
SELF MASSAGE (PAUSE!!!)
One foot at a time, use your finger tips to massage your feet. Remember when I said that these exercises were simple??? I wouldn’t lie to you, Beasts.
I work from the upper ankle down to & through my toes. I’ll grab the foot & roll my ankle around as well to work on the range of motion in my ankle.
After a minute or two, I move onto the toes. I start by stretching the toes back all at the same time, then each one individually. Keeping my heel & bottom of foot PLANTED on the ground. When doing each toe, my other fingers are holding down the toes not being used. Isolate the individual toe.
This is increasing the toes ROM while also starting to work on the elasticity of your feet skin. (Important to note at least to me, because when I started my skin “hurt” like it was being stretched. I assume that this was due to my feet being poorly taken care of for so long.)
NEXT I’ll rotate each individual toe LIGHTLY clockwise & counter-clockwise. More ROM for the toes. After each full rotation, I’ll wiggle the toes a bit too.
Give extra emphasis to lightly moving that big toe around. Do circles with your big toe, stretch it out away from the other toes (laterally).
The big toe is a MASSIVELY important part to strengthen your entire foot. It’s your biggest toe & does a lot of the work when moving bodyweight forward (like walking). THE BIG TOE IS VERY IMPORTANT!
Be thorough, very thorough when doing this exercise.
The entire self massage (pause) should take about 3-4 mins per foot. This brings our total time up to about 10 minutes or so.
Let’s move onto the last exercise!!!
HAND/TOE SPACERS
Let’s start by saying this: get yourself toe spacers. You can find them on Amazon for 7.95-15 dollars. This, like the lacrosse ball, is a NECESSARY investment if you really want to make worthwhile gains on your foot health.
They look like this:
I wear them whenever I am inside my house. Owning these are a game changer. I started to notice the real deal “foot fizeek” changes after starting to wear these. They may be uncomfortable at first, but that’s just because your toes aren’t used to being spread like that for prolonged periods of time. Start short & move up. Now, I can even sleep in them if I want to. Because I BUILT IT UP over time.
It is ESSENTIAL to counteract the “mild” toe binding effect that modern shoes & socks have on our feet. Shoes, even athletic shoes, are designed with very small toe boxes that pretty much fold our feet in on themselves. This is extremely detrimental to our overall foot health & often plays a role in knee pain, hip pain, back pain and much more.
Toe Spacers are where you start. Toe socks & barefoot shoes are where you evolve to.
Where do your hands come into play though?? Whenever I give myself a top of foot massage I also do this at the very end:
I hold hands with my feet like I’m walkin thru a meadow holdin hands with a shorty.
ON TOP OF DAILY TOE SPACER USAGE, I manually spread my toes with my hands every day. I feel as though the toe spacing stretch & exercise is a bit more “intense” this way and allows for greater toe spread. BUT the process is sped up drastically when you wear your spacers.
It may feel uncomfortable or weird, or whatever. It isn’t that bad. Suck it up & get tough! It subsides shortly & it is much more painful in the long run to have terrible knees, hips and back because you have JANKED UP feet!
WRAPPING UP/YOUR HOMEWORK
For about 12-20 bucks & 10-15 mins of time a day (assuming you only do one set per day, but please try for at least two, at least morning and night people), you can now start to get to work on strengthening & reoptimizing your foot health.
This is the start, more in depth stuff comes later.
I aim for 3 sets a day on each foot. That is what I would do personally.
But that’s just me & I am just a simple Beast Monk.
Daily:
2 Minutes (per foot) Lax Ball Rollout plus both toe exercises on Lax Ball
2-4 Minutes (per foot) Self-Massage (pause)
1 Minute (per foot) of Hand Spacing with toes
Daily Toe Spacer usage at home
2-3 sets PER DAY of all this. One in morning, one at night AT LEAST.
You spend all day on your feet, they carry the entire weight of your body through your life. We are ground up creatures.
If your feet are your roots, you owe it to yourself to water them & feed them properly. Take care of yourself homie, especially when it is this simple & easy to do. There really are no excuses.
We build the foundation & then we go DEEPER than Deep.
P.S. I offer one on one consulting services. In these calls you learn simple disciplinary practices (including breathwork) to help build discipline & foundational health in your life. Not only that, the practice of building discipline also is a superpower for building a champions mindset. What we are focusing on, is the start of building up your fundamental level of health.
For the month of August if you type in AUGUST at checkout you get 20% off a one hour call. If you are interested about learning foot health 1 on 1, shoot me a DM on twitter.