3 Pilates Exercises You Can Do For Your Aching Feet

They are actually quite an amazing structure. The foot and ankle contain 26 bones, (one quarter of the bones in the entire human body are in the feet), 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. They support our entire body weight, and are able to make micro-adjustments automatically as we navigate through uneven terrain. They provide the foundation for which our entire body balances on.

For such an important part of our body, it’s sad that we don’t spend more time taking care of them.

• We shove them into high heels that throw all of our weight forward onto the balls of our feet. It’s amazing we can even stay upright!
• We shove them into pointy, fashionable shoes so they look pretty. Bunions here we come.
• We shove them into shoes with arch supports that hold our arches up, so the muscles that we do have in our feet don’t have to do any work – the arch support does it all for them!

We really do abuse our feet – it’s amazing that they perform as well as they do!

We go to the gym to work out our arms, legs, back, abs…. why don’t we work out our feet?

Joe Pilates knew better! His method works the entire body – including the feet! Always the inventor, he created two different pieces of apparatus to work the feet – the Foot Corrector and the Toe Corrector. Today, we’ll talk about the Foot Corrector. We’ll address the Toe Corrector in another article.

The foot corrector is an amazing piece of equipment that helps to correct whatever imbalance you may have in your feet.

• If you have a flat foot, with fallen arches, the foot corrector will help you build and strengthen the muscles in the bottoms of your feet so that you can begin to re-build your arches.
• If you have high, stiff arches, the foot corrector will help you begin to move the bones, release the tightness in the muscles on the soles of your feet, and begin to get a little more movement and softening in your arches.

The same piece of equipment. The same series of exercises. But a very different outcome – depending on what your foot needs. Joe Pilates was a genius!

There is a short series that you can do on the foot corrector. If you come in 5 minutes early before your pilates lesson or class, you could run through the routine on each foot. You will be amazed how much better your feet will feel in your lesson that follows.

If you don’t have access to a foot corrector, you are not out of luck.

Joe Pilates developed some exercises using a towel. Known as the “Towel Exercises”, you place a small/medium sized towel on a floor (not a carpet – you need the towel to be able to slide). Anchor your heel toward the back of the towel. Lift the ball of your foot up, reach the toes forward on the towel, “grab” the towel with your toes, and pull the towel back toward your heel. Do this several times until you have reached the other side of the towel. Then, using your toes, flick the towel back to where it started, and do the whole thing over again.

Another option is to massage the bottom of your feet using small balls (firm tennis balls, lacrosse balls, or “pinky” balls. Just roll the bottom of your foot forward/back, left/right, in all directions. It will feel like you have just woken up the sole of your foot!

Click HEREto learn how to do more Pilates for your feet.