No matter how you choose to stay active, routine exercise offers numerous health and wellness benefits. It gets your heart pumping, blood circulating, and muscles growing, leading to a domino effect of other positive health influences. Ensuring you engage all forms of movements and body parts optimizes your health and maximizes the benefits you experience.
However, most people leave their feet out of their workout routines. Despite walking being a prominent part of daily activities, it still doesn’t provide your feet with the most beneficial form of training. Strengthening your feet and specifically targeting them in exercise offers a range of benefits. Read on to learn why you should add foot exercises to your workout routine.
Reduce Foot Pain and Aches
Overworking your feet causes foot aches and pain, especially for those with flat feet. Although slightly contradictory, regular foot exercises help minimize the occurrence of aches and pain. When you work out, your muscle fibers experience small damages that then heal and strengthen. The stronger your muscles, the more support your feet possess.
This effort reduces uneven weight distribution, minimizes impact force against your feet, and improves their overall durability, making you susceptible to aches and pain. Foot exercises are also a popular way to fight against flat foot pain, along with other sources of foot ailments.
Improve Flexibility and Functionality
Working out your feet also increases flexibility. In order to properly function and move, your feet require a set amount of strength and flexibility. Minimal flexibility means less motion range, affecting how you walk and other essential functions. Stuff feet put other body parts like your ankles, joints, and legs at risk of harm, forcing them into unnatural and uncomfortable positions.
You can improve your foot’s flexibility through yoga or certain movement exercises. Adding foot stretches to a yoga session ensures a full-body workout and increases your overall flexibility. Along with improving your foot’s motor abilities, incorporating foot exercises is one of many ways to improve your yoga workouts and maximize your benefits.
Maintains Your Foot’s Natural Structure
The structure of your foot plays a key role in its functionality. Naturally, each foot should feature a slight arch, giving your feet flexibility, a means to diffuse impact collision force, and a way to evenly distribute applied weight.
However, many people are flat-footed from birth. Others gain fallen arches from lack of muscle strength supporting the arches and intense overuse. Exercising your feet maintains your foot’s natural structure. It creates a strong structural support system for your feet, ensuring they stay in their optimal form.
You should add foot exercises to your workouts for various reasons, from reducing pain to optimizing functionality. It offers numerous benefits and plays an essential role in ensuring you keep your body, head to toe, in prime condition.
Dianne Pajo is a Certified Personal Trainer based out of the Chicagoland area with a passion for music, combat sports, and animals. She enjoys competing in amateur boxing and kickboxing, but in her other leisure time, you can find her performing music around the city. She is also a dog mom of 2.