Short Foot Posture
With everyone talking about barefoot running and getting out of very cushy/supported shoes over the past year, I thought it would be good to review the Janda short foot posture and go over some exercise progressions that we have been using to help re-train the intrinsic muscles of the foot.
What is it?
The Janda short foot posture is a technique that Janda proposed to teach patients to shorten the longitudinal arch of the foot, thus moving the patient out of their flat foot position. The short foot posture offers a variety of benefits at the foot such as:
- Increased proprioception of the bottom of the foot
- Enhanced joint alignment up the chain at other joints
- Improved stability of the body
- Increased strength of the foot for better locomotion
As you will see in the below video, exercises with the short foot posture should follow similar progressions of any other exercise you would use:
Bilateral stance > Split Stance > Single Leg Stance
Important point
Refrain from curling the toes, excessively flexing them into the floor, or trying to grip the floor with the toes. The arch should be created with the toes flat on the ground, not overly flexed, and drawing the ball of the big toe toward the heel of the foot.
As you will see in the video, when the client moves to single leg stance, his foot stability is challenged, and his big toe starts to come up off the ground (although he works to correct it right when it happens). The goal is to perform the movement with a healthy arch and the big toe down on the ground. Trying to push all your weight to the outside of the foot in order to create an arch is not the same as the short foot posture.
Exercises
In the video we used some single arm cable row progressions, however, there are a variety of exercises we perform to re-train the foot:
- Single leg clocks (some call this single leg excursion or star-balance)
- 1-arm cable chest press/rows
- Single legged deadlifts
- Split Squats
- Step ups
- Medicine ball throws and catches
Again, exercises should follow a logical progression:
Static (very little movement) > Dynamic movement with lower extremity stable > Dynamic movement with lower extremity mobile > Explosive movements
Always ensure that the client can handle one progression before moving to the next!
Where to place it in the workout
We use these movements in one of two places during our training sessions. Obviously these are not heavily loaded strength exercises, so we use these either as part of our warm up, or later in the training session as an ‘accessory movement’.
Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance.com
26 comments
Great article! Coincides exactly with what I was looking for, aren’t coincidences fun?
rick,
Just to be clear, these would be considered teaching methods, such that what exercise is being used during the process is merely a means to an end and not receiving a prominent training effect on its own, yes?
So with the rowing example, the rowing is merely to be able to feel the arch during dynamic movements of the upper body and this wouldn’t “count against” the total volume for any other upper-back related training being done that day….or am I mistaken?
And if this is correct, do you concern yourself primarily with quality over any specific parameters when determining when to progress? Or do you focus on establishing quality and then require certain minimal benchmarks in terms of time holding thr position or reps completed in the position or what have you before moving on?
Thank you in advance for any feedback.
Oops, sorry for mistyping and truncating the first part of your name, Patrick!
Hi, Patrick. Thanks for more great stuff. I just want to clarify something to be sure I wasn’t doing things incorrectly in the past. In your video, you show the toe lift before “gripping” the floor between the ball of the foot and the calcaneous. If attempting to do this without lifting the toes fisrt, would this essentially amount to positioning the foot so that the arch is present/the foot is neutrally aligned and not in relative pronation or supination and then “squeezing” the foot (without actually noticeably flexing the toes and gripping the floor, as you pointed out) so that it appears to subtly shorten while maintaining the arch?
And once this position can be maintained during dedicated/focused drills, is it something that should simply be occurring subconsciously/reflexively during movement as required as opposed to consciously attempting to perform it while executing something like a deadlift?
@Jeffrey – Thank you, glad you found it useful.
@Kevin – Yes, the goal is to work on obtaining optimal foot position and moving the upper extremity. Depending on your control, you may get a training effect from the exercise itself. But in general, focus on the foot position. Like I said, it is more of an acessory movement or a warm up than it is a “main lift”. That being said, I always concern myself with the quality of the movement. I don’t dismiss a quality row because I am having the person work on strengthening the foot. Good movement is always paramount. Hope that makes sense.
@Bert – You can cue it however you like. I find that lifting the toes and getting the arch works best for people (or me doing it manually with my hands so they can get a feel for it). But, if you don’t want to lift the toes up, then just work on creating the arch without (a) letting the big toe come up off the ground or (b) excessively gripping the floor with the toes. Hope that helps.
Patrick
What value would this have for someone who can not create an arch. As per when standing on their toes you do not notice an increase in the arch. …….cough cough….. me.
As per
Jordan,
This is why we use the exercise, for those that are not able to create an arch. This is one of the ways we can try and re-train the intrinsic muscles of the foot.
Patrick
If the foot is truly structurally flat, these techniques can be provocative or fruitless as best.
Before giving up, make sure manual therapy does not release mobility in the subtalar and mid-tarsal joints.
Thanks for posting this. I will have to play around with it a bit.
@Charlie – Good call. A structurally flat foot will need to be addressed via other means.
Patrick
Pat,
Great stuff here. Just got done reading Phil Page’s “Assessment and treatment of Muscle Imbalance” on Janda’s work and these progressions really tie in nicely with the short foot concept.
My question for you in regard to pronation is the dosage of barefoot training itself.
For example, for someone new to barefoot exercise, would you perform the primary lift barefoot or simply ask the client to remove their shoes for the warm up or accessory lift? How would you progress this as the client’s tolerance improves?
Chris,
If you are trying to move someone into barefoot training, then I would progress slowly (like everything). There is no need to jump in 100% right off the bat and have it come back to bite you later down the road.
For the most part, people don’t train totally barefoot at my place (some may wear vibrams or others may where free trainers). I do like to see warm ups with the shoes off if possible, and then if we need to do any of the movements shown in the video, we do them with the shoes off as well (either after the warm up or later in the workout). If we are talking about running, again, we progress slowly. The individual may run with their normal footwear during a training run, however the last few tempo runs they can take the shoes off and do them (in the grass) in their socks.
Patrick
Chris,
Charlie Weingroff just posted information on how to begin with barefoot training in his blog. I encourage you to check it out as well – http://charlieweingroff.com/2010/09/where-to-start-barefoot/
Patrick
[...] more information on the short/small foot, check out Patrick Ward’s blog, Chapter 22 of Liebenson’s Rehabilitation of the Spine or Page, Frank, & Lardner’s [...]
Patrick, this is great! I will put some of these techniques to use with my clients! Nice job bro!
Hi- really great job on the blog, excellent posts.
I was wondering if you’ve worked with people who have morton’s foot? In case your not familiar, it’s when the first metatarsal is shorter than the 2nd metatarsal and occurs in about 30% of people.
I’ve found that in athletes with morton’s foot, it creates instability in the foot which triggers a chain of dysfunction up the ankle, knee, hip, back and neck. People tend to have developed flat feet if they have mortons foot which greatly effects jumping and sprinting ability.
Any thoughts?
Tyler,
Thanks for the comments. Yes, I have heard of mortons foot and I know that Travell and Simons have talked about some of the compensations that can take place because of it. I can’t say that I have ever worked with someone who had this problem though.
Do you have more information on it or have you worked with many athletes who have this issue?
Patrick
I can’t say I’ve worked with a ton of people that have morton’s either. My experience mostly comes from my own experiments and working with some athletes and older people.
I learned about it after reading Travell and Simons as well. At first I disregarded the information as irrelevant but as I read the common symptoms of morton’s foot, I noticed that it was really close to what I had experienced. Basically I had achilles problems, chronic peroneus longus pain, flat feet, extremely tight glute medius/piriformis, etc. I also had a mean case of quad dominance. I had trigger points in all these places as well. I did the diagnosis test for morton’s and discovered that I had it.
After further research the basic problem is that having the second metatarsal contacting the ground takes the stress off the stronger first metatarsal, and makes the foot unstable. Instead of having a “tripod” your standing on an “ice skate”. The body reflexively tenses the stablizing muscles: peroneous, tib posterior, tfl, glute med, piriformis- all the way up to the neck. Because of these adaptations the glutes get shut off and trigger points develop in all of the over-active stabilizers. The end result is an athlete that may be good at two foot jumping and standing vert, but relatively poor at sprinting and single-leg jumping, and has terrible mobility at the ankles and hips.
I’m training for collegiate track & field decathlon, and the volume of my training combined with morton’s foot set me up with some nasty movement dysfunctions. I used four strategies to fix it:
1. Toe pad under ball of foot to make the first metatarsal contact and restore the foot “tripod”
2. Lots of soft tissue work on hips, legs, back, calves, feet.
3. Reactivation exercises for glutes, lots of posterior chain work.
4. Retraining the foot muscles to redevelop the arches.
Through these strategies I drastically improved my athleticism: mobility, speed, explosiveness greatly increased. Cured all my nagging problems (dorsal foot pain, achilles, peroneous strain, patellar tendon issues, hip pain, lack of hip extensibility). I went from having flat feet to high arches. My sprinting and jumping had amazing improvements.
The other part of this story is that supposedly 30% of people have mortons foot. Most probably don’t do the level of activity to end up with the same pain patterns. However, I worked with a bunch of my fellow athletes the last 2 years, and whatta ya know? people with achilles tendon problems, tight hips, and patellofemoral pain almost always have mortons foot… I did the same soft-tissue treatments on them and was able to fix the issues. I worked on several people back home over the summer and fixed some foot/ankle/knee issues that people had for years.
I’ve always been curious if anyone else has encountered these symptoms in athletes and connected them to morton’s. So far, no one I’ve talked to has made the same connection, but I’d be interested in hearing your opinion on it.
The techniques in your article here are great, basically the same thing I did to completely restore my arch after the soft tissue work.
Tyler
Excellent info Tyler. Sounds like you were really on the ball with regard to your approach to correcting this issue and getting your training back on track!
Patrick
Hey Patrick, great video!
I’ve got question for you about situation on the other side of the spectrum. What about supinators, people with very high (to high) arch? My arches are so high, there is no support in the mid foot whatsoever…
Hello Tomek,
Yes, this can be a real problem. This exercise would not be a good choice for someone who over supinates. If possible, try and find yourself a manual therapist who can (a) determine if your foot issue is one in which they can work with (IE, is it a structural thing or a functional thing) and then (b) perform some work on the foot (plantar fascia) and ankle and attempt to increase mobility (if they think it is possible to restore some).
Patrick
[...] for a few years when I was about seven or eight years old. However, this is an article about short-foot posture. It’s a method for teaching the foot to shorten the arch, therefore reducing problems of flat [...]
[...] Short Foot Posture by Patrick Ward [...]
Hi there Patrick:) Thanks so much for your great info. Would you recommend trying to use the short foot position while walking? And do you think you can use a barefoot strengthening approach to correct problems caused by hypermobile flat feet?
I wouldn’t try and hold the short foot while walking. The foot does need to pronate during normal gait. The problem is that when the foot needs to supinate in order to get ready for push off most people are still pronating (hence overpronation). Train the foot to get stronger in the gym and see what happens. Also, solid hip strength is very important for maintaining the short foot.
patrick
It’s amazing how many of my colleagues don’t know what short foot exercises are, even though they are so helpful with training and rehab for athletes and anyone else using their feet and lower extremities on a daily basis.
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