Morton's Foot?

[jasmine]

I have been fooling around with my own padding, toe spacers, massage, foot exercises--and am much better off ( also thanks to reading all these posts, esp knottedYet) than anything podiatrist or orthopedist says --which is essentially surgery!! Wearing toe spacers functionally has really helped move me along, this was suggested to me by structural integrationist wonderful person and it makes sense. So yup, trust your own knowings and don't listen to naysayers! Believe you can get better and you will

[OakLeaf]

@Zia, this thread isn't that old.

I ditched the pads under the first MTs within a few months. If anything, they were making my feet weaker and more rigid than the custom orthotics did.

The point of all this is to get your feet both strong and flexible enough that the parts of your feet that are supposed to support you, actually are supporting you - getting your weight equally in your first and fifth met heads and both sides of your heels, with your ankles in neutral. That takes foot and hip strength, as well as foot flexibility.

I read something a while back, and I can't remember whether it was something Knott said or someone else, but it was along the lines of, "If someone said they can't lift five pounds, would your first suggestion be putting their arms in a cast permanently?" That's what orthotics do - it's like casting your feet - and while a few people obviously do need them, it makes no sense to do that before you've even tried letting your body do what it was born to do.

Now, if a quack ortho put you in orthotics when you were six years old, old biomechanics die hard, weak muscles take time to strengthen, and anything that happens in your feet has consequences all the way up your postural chain. So I'm not "there" yet by any means. I'm still wearing the metatarsal arch supports in my running shoes (they support the second through fourth mets so the middles of my feet don't collapse). I have to mentally give myself posture corrections and tell myself to stop toeing off whenever I do aerobics, stand or walk. Head over shoulders, shoulders over hips, hips over knees, knees over heels. Much of the corrections have to do with correcting a forward lean and a flattened lumbar curve - yoga has been great for this. I can stand for hours barefoot or in flat shoes now, and I'll be tired, but I won't have the back or foot pain I used to get. So I can see the day when I'll be able to run without the domes, too.

As far as running, my second marathon is this Sunday. As far as cycling, I haven't been riding nearly as much this year, only about 2500 miles, but that's not because of any physical issues. I've also been correcting issues on the bike, but not directly related to my feet. Still, it's been instructive, because on the bike, learning to stop ankling, and lowering my saddle to an appropriate height, have had to happen in tandem, little by little. Now my Achilles, my calves and my knees are all happy on the bike. It's a good parallel for all the different corrections that are happening in my posture.