FEET WORK IN RUNNING

There are a lot of problems related with our understanding and not understanding the role of feet in running. The range of these problems goes from slight soreness to heavy injuries. I am not getting into the injuries now, we'll discuss them at a later time, let's talk about our understanding of what do feet really do in running?

The major problem is to understand what they do and what they do not do. From this point of view our next questions are the following ones: 1) how much and to which part of "what they do" do we have to pay our attention? 2) Is it necessary to apply our voluntary efforts to the feet work and if yes, then what kind?

Our image of running is inseparable from our vision of the feet as a major propulsive force working according to a modern paradigm, called "push-off" or "toe-off". From this point of view, our feet work to make forward propulsion as the finishing element completing the legs extension. This image is strongly supported by the anatomical structure of feet with noted calf muscle development and the form of the foot as a lever. Everything seems to confirm the importance of feet in producing forward propulsion of the body and therefore, the necessity of our attention and focus on executing the specific motion - plantar flexion.

This exact image of a pointed foot at the end of push-off symbolizes our vision of running and we have a complete illusion of doing it ourselves in each step in running. Our propreoception gives us plenty of sensations about this matter and we never even question if it is a true picture and true function of our feet in running? Well, I guess we should start questioning it. There are lots of reasons to do so, coming from each part of our movement structure involving our anatomy, physiology, psychology, mentality and of course biomechanics.

Kinesiology defined two functions of the foot: support and propulsion. If the function of support is nothing to argue with, then a propulsive function as an active, conscious and voluntary muscles contraction is very questionable from several points of views. We'll start our reasoning from the anatomical part and look on the foot from the point of view of location, size and leverage.

The foot is a part of the leg providing support for our body during its time on the ground, which is very short in running, during which our body moves forward. The question is at which point of support our foot is supposed to do the push off? Do we really know about this and can actually indicate it at each step at different speeds, complicated by fatigue and many other factors? Another thing is that the foot, according to biomechanical studies, is the slowest joint in movement among all other joints of our body. So there is a great controversy with logic here, when we are talking of the finishing push-off meaning the fastest voluntary movement at the end of support.

There is another controversy coming from the "extensors paradox" effect found in the study of electrical activity of leg muscles during support time. Electrical activity of quads in a propulsive phase ceases in any runner and at any speed. From this fact alone the question arises: how could the feet do their propulsive work, when the main propulsive muscles are off? There is only one answer here and it is provided by the Pose method philosophy of movement: the foot just continues to support the falling body until the falling is over, which is not under our control. We need to be ready to disengage out foot from support by pulling foot from the ground. This is one of the main notions and elements of the Pose Method: "Do not do push off - just pull the foot from the ground".

Dr.Romanov