SUPINATION
Supination is the position of the foot before landing with the foot oriented to the ground with the lateral part. We are not concerned about supination from midstance, because body weight is already off from the BOF and hence there is no excessive load on the foot.
Touching the ground happens on the lateral edge of the foot. By itself it is not a big deal and it doesn't really threaten you, if it doesn't go to some extremes in terms of putting your body weight on the lateral side of the foot instead of touching the ground.
Supination is a protective movement of the body when you are looking for support. It is a subconscious action of the body with the desire to meet support earlier and postpone the body weight placement on the BOF.
It is related to fear because together with supination goes landing ahead.
It comes as one protective motion to place the foot in front of the GCM of the body. The questions are: do we have to be afraid of the supinated position, do we need supinated position, and if it's dangerous to us, how can we get rid of it.
Supination is an extra loading for the muscles. But we are doing this because we are getting a wrong image of landing on the BOF. In a way it is an extension of the leg. It is a lack of skill to land on the BOF and fall directly. With supination you are "buying" time to postpone the Pose and the Fall. Its major cause is fear and it looks like activity to extend the leg and activity to get the foot to the ground earlier.
How does supination affect you? First, it tenses your muscles,
second, it brings the foot placement ahead of the body and if we get a rigid supination position it leads to two immediate injury risks:
- Stress fracture at the metatarsalas, usually the 3rd and 4th
- Morton's neuroma
From this logic it means that supination doesn't really benefit us. Therefore the question is: how can we reduce this motion?
Taking into account that we are looking for placement of the body weight during landing on the BOF and having the foot in a neutral position we have to do exercises related to these requirements. The simplest exercises are jumping with a rope where the foot placement is automatically regulated. I prefer that this exercise is done on the carpet, wooden floor or barefoot. This exercise gives you a proper perception of a non-supinated landing on the BOF.
Other exercises which can help you to overcome this error are standing in the Running Pose, changing support, the Pony drill, tapping, skipping and the front lunge which again come to a very simple thing of placing the body weight on the BOF. Furthermore you can use some free weights like a bar and hop with bar overhead, gives you a very nice perception of the body weight placement on the BOF. All these exercises should be alternated with running so that you can transfer immediately the feeling of the body weight on the ball of the foot to running.
Another thing that you can do in terms of muscle work related at the foot attachment to built strength of the feet are exercises with rubber band resistance, doing inward and outward movements and dorsi flexion.
Dr.Romanov
