The Surprising Connection Between Your Feet & Hips

When is the last time you exercised your ankles & toes? 

I know they aren’t as exciting as training your Abs & your Glutes 🍑, but they are just as important!

Our feet do so much for us, supporting our body as we move through the world, but they are so rarely exercised. And because modern day life involves the majority of us being in shoes all day long, our feet quickly lose their range of motion and strength, and our toes can get squished together.  Have you ever heard doctors call shoes foot coffins? There is a reason!

Our body is composed of individual joints, that work together collectively to create our posture and our movement.

This means that no joint or muscle in our body ever works alone, never gets injured alone and most importantly never heals alone!

There are so many ways that our ankles affect our hips. You will seriously be here allllll day if I nerd out about all of them! 😂

One that you may be the most familiar with is how limited ankle mobility affects your ability to squat. Have you ever seen people put wedges under their feet in the gym when squatting? They are trying to assist their body by lessening the joint angle at their ankles by lifting their heels so that they can create deeper hip flexion. 

Squatting is one of THE essential daily movements that we need to do well, otherwise getting in and out of a chair, sitting down on the toilet, etc. will become really difficult and we don’t want that! 

We tend to take our ankles for granted, so it is quite common for them to lack mobility, but they have a huge job to do! Our ankles are the first joint to get impacted when we walk. The average American walks 3,000-4,000 steps a day. And I know many of us aim for 10,000 steps because marketers are so good at their job. That is a lot of repetitive movement! And if our ankles aren’t equipped to handle that repetitive stress, we are going to feel the domino effect up the chain- especially in our hips & knees.

There is this pretty neat thing called the arthrokinetic reflex. In simple terms, it means that if a joint is compressed and movement is restricted, that the body is going to respond by protecting itself.

Our bodies are simply amazing! We don’t always realize how big a role our brain and our nervous system play in our ability to move. We are always receiving sensory input from our surroundings.

The brain’s number one goal is to keep us safe, so if the information senses that the movement is dangerous, then the brain will protectively guard against the movement as a means to prevent damage.

So if when we are walking or running and our brain senses that our ankles are compressed and not moving well, the brains response is going to be to limit our strength as a protective mechanism.  Watch this!

In some ways it seems like it is a bad system to have, because it limits your strength when you have ankle tightness, but it also works both ways. So if you improve your ankle mobility, your hip strength improves as well. The body is so cool!  

Have I mentioned I am a huge science nerd and I love research? 🤓

I know that is a lot of science coming at you, but I can’t stress enough how important it is to train the body as a whole instead of isolating joints.

I see it all the time when my clients come to me. They haven’t been getting results in fixing their chronic hip pain and tightness because they are only treating the symptoms of where they are feeling the pain or tightness. 

When you treat the whole body, that is when everything will change.

That is why I had to include a Foot class as one of the bonus classes for my Heal Your Hips program. Our feet and ankles are usually neglected in our training, but having the support from the ground up is imperative and plays a key role in our hip strength. They deserve their very own class dedicated just to them! I also included a PDF of the exercises so you can quickly look for a reminder and do them as you have time throughout your day. 

If you have been struggling to get fix your chronic hip pain & tightness so you can enjoy moving your body again and do simple daily tasks without paying the price, then it is time to try a different approach! Learn from an expert who not only has been helping clients with all of these issues for the past 10+ years, but has also healed herself from chronic hip & low back pain and tightness. 

8 Weeks to Stronger Healthier Hips!