The human foot was originally “designed” to travel on soft, natural surfaces like earth and sand. Unfortunately, instead of soft earth, we now spend every day running, walking, and standing on unnatural hard, flat surfaces like roads, and marble floors.
These surfaces force our feet to roll over to gain ground contact and our arches tend to lower and flatten. Too much rolling over of the foot, or “excess pronation,” is believed to affect over 50% of any given population!
Interestingly, although the foot rolls inwards, often the shoe will wear excessively on the outside edge of the heel. This is due to the fact that foot normally lands on the outside edge of the heel first, and then rolls over inwards causing excess pronation as a compensatory motion.
As your body is like a building, a faulty mechanism at the base of support may cause a compensatory weakness in other areas of the body.
Excess pronation may cause pain in various areas of the foot, shin pain, knee malalignment, and hip and low back pain.
For the sportsperson foot biomechanics are particularly significant. When running the body exhibits somewhere in the region of 4 ½ times body weight forces passing through the body into the lower limbs. If the lower limbs are not correctly aligned, then there will be poor shock absorption of these forces resulting in pain in a various areas of the body.
Equally important for the sports enthusiast is the choice of footwear for that particular activity. Footwear should be chosen specifically for the sport undertaken and changed on a regular basis as significant wear patterns develop.
If there are noticeable faults in the sportsperson’s biomechanics, then an Orthotist or Podiatrist should be consulted who will assess the foot mechanics and, if required, design a custom made foot Orthotic to correct any lower limb malalignment.
