Mind Over Feet

Hi, I'm Trent Macintyre, and welcome to mind over feet for our warmup. We start standing in a parallel with your feet about shoulder width apart, and we're going to do some gentle ankle tilts. Let's start with the left foot here. So what you're gonna do is allow the left foot to slightly roll out, no movement in the pelvis or hip, and you're gonna bring it back to flat. And the idea here is that as you're rolling it out, you might feel a gentle to medium stretch along the outside of the foot and ankle there. Nothing too much, just rolling the ankle a little bit. Just start to feel a little activation.

Ultimately what we're looking for in this warmup is just to get the nerve endings to fire up a little bit in the foot. Your feet have the most nerve endings in the body. So when it comes to proprioception and information to the brain about how you're walking, the feet have a big influence over how your body functions. So we want to make sure we pay attention to the feet. We pay attention to those nerve endings. Okay, a couple more ruling it out.

Find a small to medium stretch. Good. You might find that you're wanting to move the pelvis or you're wanting to move your leg a lot. Try to keep those pretty still so it's just the foot cut. Let's change sides to the right foot. Ruling it out. The first couple might feel a little bit tighter than the rest, so let that kind of ease into your range. If you feel like the range is small in the beginning, you can allow it to get bigger as you do more repetitions.

Good. Keep going. And I'm just going to demonstrate if you can't stand to put weight on the feet for this one, you could also sit and do the same thing down here in an unloaded position. Okay, a couple more on that right side isn't breath so you're not holding your breath with that foot roll over. Oh Nice. And the weight stays pretty centered, so we're not leaning away from the foot or toward the foot.

Good. One more time. That side. Good. Now stay here. We're just going to do one thing here where you lift the toes up off the mat so you feel like you're pulling away from gravity. And this let the feet settle and flatten and spread into that. Again, lift the toes up good and let that relax and just easy not for body. So you focusing on lifting the feet up, getting their attention.

You might find if you don't have a lot of range of motion in your feet, that's okay. It might be just a small motion, but try to get as much as your body will allow. Good. Let's do it one more time and the lift. Nice. Rest good. Have a seat. They're gonna take your ball. We'll start with the right foot. So you're gonna have it in front of your right foot.

You want to make sure that the knees are side by side here. You don't have this ball so close that you kind of jammed up on that side. It's a little bit in front of the other foot. Even to give yourself a nice room. You want to feel like you have a lot of contact on the ball. So you feel the ball with your arch quite a bit so that you're not hanging off the back of it or too far forward. Let's just start with some tracking here.

If you'd like, you keep most of your foot on the ball and you're going to roll the ball forward and send the arch with the ball over a cliff. Beautiful. And when it comes back, the heel is going to drop down behind the ball, but the toe stay attached. Okay? And then you go over, you just tracking good and dropping back. So you feel like that ankle has some articulation, heel drops down below, zero and over. Now let's take an inhale as you come back. So if we go inhale this way and then Xcel over the top. Good inhale. [inaudible] excellent over the top.

Okay. It's okay if you feel like you want to watch your foot, just don't get too sucked in like it's a laptop, you know? And you're down here like a, like a Gremlin. So keep yourself up as much as you can. Just letting that track. If you have a mirror to check yourself out once in a while, it's kind of Nice to see, to make sure you're not rolling off course.

You might think you're tracking, but really you have this alignment that's kind of off, so you want to make sure you're really trained, track aligned here so that foot is articulating properly. We'll do two more of this foot. Hmm, good. Then back to center here, and we're going to squeeze the ball. So the, Oh, it's like you're, if you foot was a hand, you're gonna hold onto the ball, your toes pull into the ball, the heel pulls into the ball. Then you gonna release that, lift the toes up and it will feel like you have more arch on the ball and the big toe joint. Right?

If the ball of the foot goes down into the ball and then squeeze, you're actively squeezing this way, but you're also actively lifting this way. So both directions are pretty active. You don't have anything that's squeezing and relaxing. It's squeezing on both sides of it. Get some blood flow down there. Wait those nerves up.

Get a nerve to wake up buddy. Nerve up. Hey, you don't have to show up. Good. Good. Lift those toes up. Good. One more time. Squeeze and lift. Good. Let's do the same thing on the other foot with the ball.

So just align it over that aside. Make sure it stays away from you so you have plenty of surface area to touch. Go back to the tracking so you're rolling it forward. Send the foot over the ball and when you roll it back, you dropped the heel down below. Zero behind the ball. Okay. And a roll that forward over the ball and you drop it down below. Zero behind the ball.

Should I make the ball roll as smooth as possible? You might find that it wants to sort of zigzag along the way. You might be putting too much pressure the ball if you feel like it's a really zigzagging, so lighten up on the ball so that you can use it as tracking. You're not really using it as a resistance yet. Good, good. Could that drop that heel down when he'd come back behind it?

A couple more going forward. Over, drop the heel down behind it. Over. Good. One more time and center. Good. Now we're going to squeeze the ball so the toes and the heel pull into the ball to hold onto that as much as possible. And then you're gonna lift the toes up. Dent the big toe joint. Ball the foot right into the ball there. Good.

And then squeeze and release. Hammered scope. Inhale lifted up. Good. I liked everybody's posture. Just got three inches taller. That was nice. [inaudible] squeeze and lift. Breath moving. Yeah, the heel digs when the toes dig.

Good Arch and big toe ball. The foot digs good. [inaudible] one more time. Good. Relax there. All right, so we're going to bring the band into this here. Keep your ball close cause we're gonna use both together. So you're going to use a band. Find the mid point of the band.

A nice heavy band is necessary here. If it's too light, it doesn't really work as well. So you want a nice thick band and when you step on it, you want to make sure that the toes are covered. So when the band pulls up that the toes have a little bit of covering there. If the toes are poking through like this, it doesn't quite work. The band ends up slipping off. So we'll have the toes covered.

It's gonna Cross in front of the Shin first and then you're going to pull up on and get real tight and then cross it over the thigh. Once it's over the thigh you can just take your hands underneath the band. I kind of reached down and pull it over my big toe a little bit. Okay. I think going to take the ball, we're gonna use the ball for tracking again so it'll feel somewhat familiar but now you're going to have a little bit of resistance with it.

So heel down, toes down and lets track over the ball, pushing through the band and she feel familiar but slightly upgraded slash a lot upgraded and bring it back and if you find your toes slip out you can just kind of reach down and make that little adjustment. As you get more practice on it, you'll feel a little bit more in tune with where you have to place your foot to make it stay put. [inaudible] you're going to exhale as we push forward. Inhale the drive back and drop the heel and over. Good and bring it back. Make sure that posture stays really vertical. You send your foot forward in a way and you bring it back. Good. Okay. [inaudible] not from here. We're going to adjust it so you have the ball, the foot on the ball and your heels off and you can lift it up in the air and then you're going to keep the ball still as much as possible and drop the heel down below zero. Nice job, and then lift your heel up and think of pushing the front of your ankle into where the band crosses. It'll almost touch the ax there.

Yeah, I might lightly touch it and then drop it down below zero and then you lift the heel and push it into the band. Nice. And then drop it down below zero. Inhale this way. Don't forget that breath, that breath support you even through your abdominals a little bit so they have a little more integration. It's not just an isolation exercise, but you have your whole self present in working for the exercise. Good. Keep going. Good. Two more like that.

Make sure you're going at your range. If you can't go as high, if it starts to cramp or it's too much, you can go a little bit lower. That's fine. Good. Can everyone take it off the ball and you can just start a ball. Keep it close. We'll come back to it later. All right, so now you're going to push the heel off the floor and the lower back down.

So a little bit more of a solid feel. So I feel like the toes stay on the ground. Even as the heel comes down, the toes stay put right on the ground. The band's going to want to kind of pull them off the ground, but you're going to use the foot. And what's cool about this exercise is that it's, you get resistance in both directions, both on the lift and the down. You still have, you still have resistance built into the foot.

Can you sense that? Yeah. Yeah, they want to complain. Yeah. Good. Then from here we're going to push through the foot so it comes off the ground. It's okay if you lean back slightly for that one. Got on a roll down toe ball heel. Good. Lift the heel, push the foot and it goes a little forward and up.

So you're off the ground and then you'll really feel that cross to the band right in the front of the arch and the ankle. Their toe ball heel. Good. It goes. He'll ball tail off and toe ball. Heel on. Good. Good.

Why don't you just kind of snag your big toe inside that band a little bit. I don't want you to miss out on any resistance opportunity there. Good. This time it's going to stay up in the air. So you gonna lift it up here. We're going to flex the foot back and then point down through all five toes, pull them all back and then articulate through and around and back and through.

Back through good and through my toe. Sneaking out. Here you go. Good. Then halfway in, just a little circles here, kind of a medium, medium to small circles, not your maximum range, and reverse it five other way to reading when you can for five pointed articulated down. Good, and just slide this off and just take a moment here with your feet side by side and just take check of how they're feeling in comparison. Good. Let me have you walk around so you can feel what it's like to walk on your feet.

Come one compared to the other. Having one kind of halfway done. So go ahead and take a little walk around. It's important to do in between just to bring that awareness to how the feet are moving. When you start to unlock the feet, you might sense that your arch articulates down more, kind of loads like a spring and helps you walk a little more. It might feel like also you just sort of walk in a circle if you didn't do the other side. How's that feel on that side? Great. Good. Cool. All right, come on down. Okay, so let's come back to the band. On the other side. So centered toes covered, cross in front of the Shin, pull it up pretty snug, cross it over the top of your five there when you can just sneak your hands inside there. Good.

And then you have your ball for tracking. Okay, good. So just start with a rolling the ball forward in a rolling the ball backwards, keeping your toes on the ball the whole time if possible. Rolling it forward. That's your second side. But it's still the same brains. There's some familiarity to it. So sometimes you might find a second side, you end up working harder out of the cause. You kind of know what's coming in the body.

Sort of like fired up and ready to push or if you're like me, I did my strong side first so my left side's like that. I didn't really wanna I don't want to do this one. Roll it back. Okay, roll it forward. Good. Let's take a breath in as it comes back. Good.

And a breath out as it goes forward. So the crossing is going right in front of the ankle there. So you're not rolling off the side or deviating this way either. I was looking for a pretty even push through there and where the x crosses gives you, gives you some indication that you're in the middle. Good. Two more roles like that with a breath.

Good, good, good. Ah Yup. Nice job. So let's change the ball of the foot. Heel off. So now the ball's going to stay quieter and we're going to drop the heel down below zero. Use that leverage to create some room and then press it up.

And I remember not putting our weight on the ball so much as using it for support. So if it gets real shaky, you probably have too much weight on it. It's just enough way to, the hip doesn't get tired so you're not really holding your leg up in the air. Nice. Exhale as you push up, hold on the next inhale as you come down and good from the breath, have a little abdominal support, supports it the whole time. Nice job. Couple more like that. Ah, Nice. Okay. Let's take the ball out and store that for later.

Then going from the floor so the heel comes off again, making sure you're not rolling out to the side or ruling in, but the ax goes pretty much to the center. Very close to the center of your ankle and down. So XL is you're lifting up. Inhale it down. Ah, down and Perez. Yeah. Nice work that is hard to come off the floor. So you're gonna push good.

Lean back if you need to. That's fine. And then go toe ball, heel back to the floor. So lift the heel up, push it a foot. Good Toe Ball, heel all the way back down to the ground. You lift the heel, push the arch forward. Good. Keep that posture along so you're not sliding back into it. It's okay if you lean in, but don't let yourself get compressed your slide down.

Good Heel, toe, toe ball, heel. Nice. Exhale. Here we go. And uh, good. This next one's going to stay up in the air. So you press it up and a flexing point, pull it back and stretch it over the back. Over. Ah, good breast supports it. Abdominals, support it, push it through.

Good. Thanks John. Uh, and bring it back and do medium circles. Just mid range, not your full range. We don't want the joins the bang into each other and get jammed in short either way. Five Times two, three, four, five. Point it articulated down. Nice job. Slide that off the foot. Just notice what that feels like there. Good. Come on up and take a walk around and just see how that's feeling.

How's she feel? More grounded. A little more sense of [inaudible]. Even weight from leg to leg. You might even find that your hips are moving a little freer. If you tend to have tightness and you have lower back. This can help with your gait and help with your walking to help loosen that up.

Are you noticing that? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Good. Good. All right, come on down. So I'm going to have you sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you. I'm going to stay up here and demo. So with your band. Now we're going to go on the balls of your feet. The toes do not have to be inside the band. For this one, you're just going to have the balls of the feet on and start with your feet close together so that when you put this on and you tie it there, it's just barely snug.

Don't bear down on it. You don't want this to be over tight. That's not going to be your friend and just tighten the bolts so you can get out of it later and you have your legs out in front of you just like that. So you're going to start with the legs a little bit apart so that your band has some resistance. You don't want to start too close and have it be loose cause it's not going to support you or help you with the exercise. So open it up little bit wider. Yeah. Yeah. Nice and firm so that when you kind of relax your ankles, it naturally pulls your toes and to face each other. Yeah, exactly.

So that when you pull out to parallel, you have good, good resistance and engagement in the band and then going to let that roll in so your big toes come toward touching they or may not actually touch with. That's where they're going. So your autism feet make like an h shape and then you bring it back and they make more like a parallel train track or like an h. The band is like the middle of the h and then to bring it back and there's your a shape and it's tempting them. Do this from your legs rolling in and out.

Ideally we keep your kneecaps facing up to the sky, the legs don't move and it's really in the lower leg and the ankle and the foot and the arch turning and pronating back and forth. So your ankle moves and your arch moves and then the ankle arch move this way. So you really have two sets of joints working in each direction. You have your ankles that articulating back and forth, and you have your arches that are rotating back and forth. Good. So when you're pressing out here, we're going to exhale, we're going to speed it up a little bit for five. So go one.

Keep us femurs really still too. And N and three, four, nice and five. Hold it there. And we're just going to Tuck the toes under and curriculum, keeping the outward pressure on the band and then lift the toes back towards you. Good. And again, Tuck the toes and we're not pointing the feet yet. We're just curling until it's like a toes wrapped on the foot bar, you know, kind of a Palladia wrap, kind of a feel and pull it back and back. And one more. Curl and back. Good. Just take a break there for a second. [inaudible] good.

The thing about working in the ankles and the feet is that they can get very fatigued and very sore quickly during the exercises, but recovery is a much faster than other big muscles that get sore in the body. So if it gets super sore, don't panic, it will fade. This is one, one area where I will also tend to do more, uh, more sets and more repetitions. So if you find that you need more, play the video twice. Here we go, bring it out. And now you're going to 0.1 foot while the other one's flexed and you're gonna alternate. Keeping the space between the feet the same so that they're not coming in.

The big toes aren't touching each other in between each one. You stay parallel and they move along that line as they move back and forth. Can you driving me heel, pushing arts drive the other. He'll push the other arch and it just keeps alternatives. True. Nice.

[inaudible] good. Good. Now both feet pointed down. Make your AA here. Ooh, no, we're having fun. Then press it out. Yeah, it just got real. There's always that moment. Did you find a new muscle somewhere? Nice job. One more. And relax. Good. Take your feet out of there. Set that aside. Out of the way.

Make Rep to standing. So you're gonna have your feet, so they're really close together, but not quite touching. So some standing weight shifts here. So I want you to sense like you have your weight first of all, in the middle of your body. And the middle of the ankles, middle of the feet. So you're not back on the heels and you're not on the balls of the feet yet, but you feel like you have an idea of center. So from center we take a little bit of a lean forward and everything leans forward, everything evenly and then everything comes back to center.

So I don't want you to feel like your head goes further than your pelvis or your pelvis goes further than your head. But everything is sort of like timbering forward timber and then you come back good. And you feel like when you send her the toes don't have to do a lot, but as you go forward the toes are spawned and kind of dent into the mat. Or if you're in carpet it's nice cause it will kind of squish into the carpet a little bit and bring it back. Good. And that's shifted forward again. Ah, and bring it back. It's important that the heels stayed down. It's tempting to let the heels kind of lift up a little bit, but we want the heels to stay down. So as you come forward, you really use your whole kinetic chain from your big toe, through your ankle, all the way up the line to support that. And then this time as you go back, you're going to let yourself go slightly back. Every midline don't fall over, they get close and you'll feel the front of your body start to wake up a little bit. Yep. And then go forward, push into the back of the body and come back and pay particular attention to how the feet are sensing and what the weight it feels like when you're in one place versus the other.

And then shifted forward and shifted back. Just keep your breath going naturally. You don't have to have a specific breath for this one. Okay. Now from forward, this time we're going to go side as a slight side.

It goes back, he goes the other side, he goes front. So we're going to the right and we go back. I go left and we go front. Nice job. So if you were standing on a tiny little wobble board, you would just be trolling, turning it in a circle ever so slightly, but you feel your feet electrify in many different ways as you're taking that circle. Then reverse it. All right? So all that work you just did, you're putting into practice and getting it to integrate into your whole kinetic chain so that when you're out walking around, driving, getting groceries, that you have your whole body being supported by your feet. And again, you have all those nerve endings that tell your brain where you are in relation to the ground and everything around you. So you want those nerves to be awake, find center good. Just kind of relax your legs, shake out and take a walk around. One more time.

You might notice this time you have a little bit more sense of floating, a little more sense of ease, a little less work to do it. They call that being efficient. It's nice when we're efficient. [inaudible] feeling good. Great, good, good. Have a seat there, and I just want to point out that we all have pretty big ranges of motion in the feet and ankles. So if you find that you don't have that bigger engine motion, all of the exercises can be done at any range, so you can make them much smaller if you have to. Don't feel like you have to move them as big as we are moving them, but be mindful of your body's limitations and let that grow over time.

Great. Great class. You guys think very much.