How I Correct Flat Feet (Doctor Explains!)

this is going to shock many of you but people who have flat feet usually just have very low and flexible arches but if you can stabilize and strengthen this foot This Is Not a Bad Thing here's three things you have to do to fix this but first did you know that some of the best athletes in the world like Usain bold have flat feet in fact it's well known nowadays that certain genetic populations around the world just have flatter feet than others now years ago all cared about was the height of the arch they would

tell their patients that the flatter their feet the more risk of eventual pain and dysfunction they would have but clearly someone forgot to tell this last part to Usain Bolt who's considered by many to be one of the greatest sprinters of all time nowadays most practitioners like myself who treat athletes are not as concerned with the height of someone's Arch but rather the function of their feet instead what we want to do is be proactive and not allow any more flattening of the foot than what someone genetics already has in store which leads us to

our Point number one the first step in fixing flat feet is getting out of bad shoes specifically ones with a narrow toe box all they do is smash your toes together here's why a narrow toe box shoe is so bad for someone who has flat feet let's take the insole out and he's going to step on it now this is what his foot looks like within this narrow shoe his foot has to be completely within the insole now when his toes are smashed in it's very easy to over pronate and lose control of that Arch

so I just want you to pronate down let's see how easy your full foot can rotate over so he has a very poor ability when his toes are smashed together to maintain control of the very small Arch he does have however if you were to take this out and actually spread his toes out the way that his foot should be aligned in a shoe that has a wider toe box now all of a sudden because that Ray of the big toe is spread out he has greater control of the arch he does has now if

you try to sort of rotate down the foot cannot rotate too far it's more controlled when the toes can spread out so the shoe that you put your foot or put on your foot has a dramatic impact on the position of the first two and therefore your ability to control this medial Arch so if you're someone that has flat feet wearing a narrow shoe is the worst thing you could do because you are instantly decreasing your ability to control the inside small Arch that you do have now I'm sure some of you are wondering by

now what does this mean about Orthotics do I still need one the simple answer for many is No in fact podiatr Dr Ray mclanahan explains that after you get someone out of bat shoes that encourage additional flattening of the foot many are able to build their natural foot support system without any orthotic that props their arch up when we get a foot to function this way the arch is built to maintain itself so what kind of shoes do we want to wear instead we want shoes that allow your toes to natur natur Al playay out

these are going to be shoes with a wide toe box called a Barefoot shoe like the Barefoot drop zero shoe that I just designed recently with tier it's got a very wide toe boox so your toes can naturally splay out and allow your foot and the inside Arch to function as naturally as possible so now that we have you out of these bad shoes we need to strengthen your foot in this more anatomical aligned position one of the best ways to do this is with the squat here's an example of what we can do here's

the shoes that you need to use to maintain a better foot position when you squat what we're going to start with is rooting the foot to the ground so you're going to jam your big toe down and open your hip out to the side now watch when you do that naturally Jam the big toe down open the hip out the side the foot naturally moves into a little bit of an arched position whereas for a lot of people their toes come up because they're in bad shoes and their feet sort of rotating because their hips

are not engaged so this is a weak position but a strong position is toe down open the hips out to the side so being able to connect your hip all the way down to your foot is a very important part of maintaining an arch and strengthening the arch that you do have again the height of the arch is not what we're uh concerned about we're concerned with the function of the arch that you do have and the best way to do that is to strengthen this function through a squatting motion to start so big toe

down open the hip slowly go through your squat maintaining that position if I see those toes moving at all we know that we're too far back on of the heel and it's easy for the arch to collapse over so start first with just body weight being able to maintain this external rotation torque and obviously as you can progress up and load the more that you can progressively overload and build capacity with your feet like this the better it will be or the more uh easy you'll be able to maintain an arch throughout the rest of

your day and any other activity that you're doing the third and last step to fixing a flat foot is to strengthen your heel raise because a lot of people who have flat feet have a very poor ability to get up onto their toes so what I want you to start with the most simple way is just to start doing some heel raises up and back down now once you can build enough capacity to be able to do 20 of these in a row here's what you're going to do you're going to strengthen that capacity with

other movements like a toe raise and a squat so here's what you're going to do you're going to get up on your toes and then maintain this position while you squat go slow at first only go through the range that you can and still maintain that toe position and then come back up once you can do a full depth squat all the way up on your toes we're going to load it so we're going to start by holding a kettle bell or a ubell like we're using right here so come up on the toes maintain

that position control down pause in your bottom position and come back up you you can even like Dre has done do this with very heavy load but again we must start at square one which is just your ability to raise up on your heels and back down and then eventually add this into your movement repertoire but if you can do this you have very strong in stable arches even though they may not be as high as other people they are exactly what you need which is a functional foot again to reiterate one more time the

most important part of fixing flat feet is getting out of bad shoes that hinder your foot's function that's where the Barefoot trainer drop zero that I just developed with tier and other barefoot shoes come in because they allow your toes to spread out and your foot to become functional as it was designed become strong and control the arch that you do have you can find your Barefoot drop zero today on tier.com