For health? On your toes! Discover exercises for your feet

Feet. In our busy (oh, the irony) world, we rarely think about how many kilometers we walk every day. Our feet carry us through life, allow us to explore uncharted spaces, and take on new challenges. But do we know how to take care of them properly? Whether we’re runners or conquering mountain peaks – let’s take care of our feet every day and give them a moment with the right exercises.

It’s our feet that help us maintain proper posture. Choosing the wrong shoes that cause pressure, lack of rest, and ignoring injuries can lead to disruptions in the biomechanics of human movement. So let’s forget for a moment about exercises for a slim belly or muscular arms and start with the basics… literally. Here are four foot exercises that will bring relief after a long day.

Preparation:

Find a free 10 minutes and dedicate it to working with your body. Stand on a surface that feels comfortable for you – it could be a mat or simply a cleared space on the floor. Breathe deeply and appreciate that you’re doing something for yourself.

Piano keys

Standing comfortably on the mat, look at your toes and make sure each of them is pressing firmly against the floor. If you want to make sure each toe is directly connected to the mat, lean forward and use your fingers to try to lift them. Let your toes work with gravity and become so heavy that they don’t want to lift off the floor. Start lifting each toe, one by one. You can start with your right foot and the big toe, then lift and lower the other toes on its right side (from the biggest to the smallest). This exercise will help you develop motor coordination and increase the mobility of your limbs. Repeat the exercise on both feet. Do you feel the difference?

On your toes!

Who hasn’t walked on their toes as a child? Let’s go back to childhood play and allow ourselves to lift our heels to stand on our toes. Hold this position for 10 to 15 seconds, then repeat the movement several times. This exercise is well-known and often practiced by runners because it affects and stretches the posterior chain of our body. It also teaches stabilization and coordinates movement with breath.

Lifting objects

The second exercise is simply finding an object around you that can be picked up and placed back down using your foot. Take, for example, a pen, a rolled-up sock, a rubber band, or a piece of crumpled paper. Place the object in front of one foot and, using your toes, move it over to the other foot. Do the same with your left foot and move the object to the right side.

Lie down, rest...

After these three exercises, it's time for the much-needed rest. But before that... lie down, but don’t close your eyes just yet. Lie down consciously on the floor or maybe even on a bed and let your feet fall freely to the ground. Lift one of your legs up and perform the flex and point movement (push your heel out, then extend your toes as an extension of your body). Place the foot down and do the same with the other leg. Do 5 repetitions on each foot. Now you can rest – you’ve earned it! Great job for making it to this point. Remember, the first step to health, both literally and figuratively, starts right at your feet.

Maybe it's worth replacing inappropriate footwear with barefoot shoes?

The difference is enormous! Anyone who tries minimalist shoes and their magical properties even once will never want to wear modern, stiff, and narrow footwear again. Feet confined in such shoes will gradually take on their shape. This is precisely where most foot problems arise.