Foot Fitness

Hi there. I'm going to do a very short little foot warm up and maybe a little foot fitness section here. Um, and then followed by that we'll be doing a jump board workout. You can do the foot warm, warm up on its own. You don't have to do it before the jump board, but uh, it is sometimes nice to get the feet warmed up before you jump on them and really open up the base of the foot spreading the joints, the toes, the muscles, all the connective tissue, because with that repetitive jumping and impact coming down on the foot, uh, it's just a nice warm and healthy to warm your feet up that way. So I think what we'll start with first actually is just apparel, left foot alignment. And I'm going to look down at my toes.

You can look down at yours and I want you to lift all of your toes up at the same height, all 10 toes. You're flexing up those metatarsal joints and then lower the toes down. So we're just right away activating the bottom of the feet, waking up all the appropriate receptors down below, which will feed into our whole system universally into our balance so that actually can go back up onto the jump board as well. So toes up and toes down and toes up and being mindful as we're doing toes up and toes down, not really leaning back or forward, just staying right above the arch of the foot and down. Just getting some activation here and some toes don't like to come up as high as the other. So you're looking to train that.

Try to get all 10 up at the same height. Now from here, I'm going to have this work on spreading that pinky toe and fourth toe out and then pull them back in and some reaching them out toward the floor and pulling them up and reaching out to get building that lateral strength of the foot and reaching the toes out and center and Pinky toe fourth toe out. Now I'm going to try the big toe, only dipping the big toe down, big toe and up and big toe and up and big toe and up. And I'm already feeling the workout of my ankles and feet and up and big toe. Now I'm gonna try to roll the toes, starting at the Pinkie, going to the fourth, third, second, and first and peeling them up from the fridge first to the fifth and fifth down to the big toe and big toe up to the pinky. I need to practice these.

Okay. And one more and rolling up. Okay. So a lot of stimulation down at the ankle and especially the perennials for me on the outside there of my ankle. Now I'm going to have a stand on as small little tennis ball. I've got those little baby tennis balls.

I'm gonna set the rate at the base of my third toe right there. And just try to almost the prehensile wrap from the foot bar on the reformer and just open up the arch of the foot, kinda spreading. So like a cat when their cat stretches out their claws. If you were to go put push on their pad and their little claws roll could a stretch out. That's what I'm thinking here with my feet. So the pressure of the ball is helping my digits lengthen out, spreading those bones, giving those muscles some conditioning.

I'm just going to do a little rocking forward and back. It's a little rock forward and back. So I'm starting in the center of the foot. I'm also gonna go over now to the underneath of the Bunyan joint, which I call my Bunyan joint or the big toe joint and same thing, try to rock a little, do a little baby rocking motions more on the medial side of the foot. It doesn't take much. I'm going to go now over to the lateral kind of underneath the fifth toe. Same thing. Try to open up over the balls.

Okay. It's a little bit of balance work to just kind of spreading, shifting my weight in building awareness and [inaudible] no, the bottom of my body. Okay. And then onto the heel cause I'm gonna walk a little forward and just step my heels right on the ball. Same thing. It's a little weight shift.

Yeah. So kind of addressing the tripod of the foot underneath there. Now with each foot, I'm just going to take a quick kind of rub all the way through my medial arch and cross my transverse arch and the lateral arch and right in the center. I love coming off of that and just standing next to the other foot and noticing how much awake that feels for me. How very alive and having that same response on the other side.

So medial arch and transverse arch. Okay. Lateral arch and right in the center. Give it a good rub and then just standing. Oh, it feels good. So for me it feels like that the F my arch is higher off the floor.

Uh, I'm actually feeling up in a little bit into my legs and height. Feel pretty well balanced. Front and back. It's all good. Now we're going to go onto a second section here with the therabands. I'm going to sit for this and I'm going to take the theraband. I've got a medium strength, thera-band. Uh, feel free to use any strength that you want. Of course the more resistant, the more work your muscles of your feet get.

And it start with my right foot and I'm going to loop the theraband. Just Hook it over the big toe. And what I want to do is have the foot in a Dorsey flection and then just work to flex the big toe. Just simply flex that knuckle. I'm going to do about five or six. So we bending, trying to stimulate the a kind of, again for me, the medial arch.

I have a Bunyon on this foot and this feels great. You're going to give the little stretch around that joint for me. It's a very uh, difficult joint to get o mobility in. Ah, it feels good now. So then I'll move it to the second and third toe. Same thing. So I have my foot in Dorsey flection. Here we go.

And then just flexing the toes and I'm pulling back with my arm and my, uh, holding the strap a little, but I'm not doing a lot of arm work. This is the toes curling around the theraband. Five or six times. [inaudible] my arch is waking up even more and one more and then I'm gonna move down to the fourth and fifth toes. Dorsey flex and toes and toes we'll be reaching.

We did that in that standing part where you're trying to reach the toes outward to the floor. This is reaching over the band curl and stretch and Elongate. Whoops, that came out of Dorsey flection there, there. See what I mean? It's easy to go at a Dorsey flection, go to Plantar, just do the theraband, but that's something different. Keep the foot Dorsey flexed and do the toes. All right, so I'm going to do that on the other foot. It's a big toe, little wrap like that and Dorsey flex and toes. I'm pulling the band with my toe and pool, so trying to hold the foot in a parallel alignment. We are flex and flex the toe and then going to second and third. Now if you don't have a long enough or I'm going to say flexible enough hamstrings to sit like this, you could simply probably sit up on a table, maybe block something underneath your knee or even do this on the floor with your knee bent would be fine as long as you're in that Dorsey flex position of the foot. So I'm going to show it, I guess here few times with my knee bent.

Take a take that for granted sometimes and I could sit straight with my legs forward. But if you're isolating your foot or you've got a for new teachers watching and you have clients that need the feet, uh, some of your older people, they probably can't sit like this either. So maybe even doing this in a chair or like I said, with the knee bent, there we go. Okay. And then lastly, the fourth and fifth toe. Yeah, Nice Dorsi, flex foot curl. I'm trying to pull that band with my toe knuckles.

So although this is a nice little foot fitness, you can do this stuff before running or jumping a regular [inaudible] workout, taking a walk, give it to your seniors and keep their feet mobile. They need it. They'll shuffle a little less. I bet. [inaudible] and have better balance. Okay, I won't go on. So I'm going to go back to, I could, I'll go back to my right foot first foot and we're going to do a little flex and point. So the way I'm going to set this up is stepping my whole foot. I'm going to show it from this side for a sec so you can see going in and then spreading that, some of that theraband on the floor. My calf is on it. And then I'm again going into that Dorsey flexed position and now using a little more arm work to support the flection.

So I'm feeling the anterior Tibialis, that Shin Muscle really nicely contracted. A long gating, the back of the calf. Now be careful for some of us who hyper extend our knees, who liked to push the knee to the floor. That's, that's not so great. Let's just keep it that way. So I'm gonna keep that knee for me floating. I'm thinking about my foot and my ankle. Okay.

You could always roll a towel underneath your knee and put that here. So if you attempted to push your knee flat, okay, moving on. So I'm going to a role for the foot, ball of foot all the way through the toes, and I'm going to invite a little lean with my torso. Just feels good. And then I'm gonna pull those toes back and lean my body back. So adding the torso motion, it gives a little dance for me into my foot. Warm Up.

I feel a little more weight coming into the stretch, which feels nice for me. Pull the toes and heel. I'm going to do five or six of these. You could do up to 10 or 15 probably. Again, as you're going into that Dorsey flexed position, watch so that the knee does not hyperextend push and lean back and forth. It's another way to spread out the foot. You can really see it widen those toes as you're going in through your band and back. Okay. So I'm going to do that on the other side.

I'm going back and forth. All of these, you probably could just do on the same leg and then switch and just chose to go back and forth. Okay. So finding the Dorsi flection, knees floating for me and also watching so that you go completely parallel through your foot as you extend the bands. I'm going to actually face this way now and really pressing through to point. Pull the toes back and reach through the heel. So we're moving the toes forward, reaching along like their fingers and pulling back and the heel sliding forward on the floor. And three more.

You can let your body rock with this impress and back. One more. A long through that medial arch. Nice. Parallel foot. Okay, so there are two more. I'm going to go back to the first foot now. Loop it around. Okay. Now, so give me more of a are pronation, supination or sickling beveling for us dancers. Uh, it's good to do that.

Not when we're dancing so much, but for some strengthening. So I'm going to take the uh, man over here. Let's go this way. First off to the side, I'm just going to organize this side here. So holding the band fairly taught with the arm, gives it more resistance. Now the sweeping action of the foot, we'll get back here and sickling turning the foot and sweeping back.

I really want to pull with the band, the foot into the band and the motion really at the ankle. You may start to see that the whole leg will want to come along for a ride, which takes it out of the foot work. So you might even need to put your hand out your leg and stabilize, but reaching sweeping that foot sweep and sweep, pressing through that arch or doing a few more of these than the others and three and sweet woopsy and we'll call it there so I don't interrupt that. Okay, now taking the band to the opposite side. No would work this way and go back into a sickled foot position. Hold on.

Tight hand on the floor here and now pressing the outside edge of the foot away. Want to feel my lateral side of my leg from my ankle up to the knee. And same thing oppressing with the foot, not losing the leg, moving the foot press. So this one is a little more work for me. I can feel it differently.

So I also want to think about long in step so that when I push my foot to the side, the arch gets very long out toward my big toe and I do four more and three and two and last one. Okay. All right. And those two on the other foot. So I'm coming out to the side, only not band to the floor and starting with the foot onto the outside leg is stabilized and then pulling in, sweeping the foot in, so kind of sickling, that foot edge and then out and cycling in and out. Got Sweep. Great training for the arch of the foot is medial ankle muscles and sweep and sweep and sweep. Hmm. Five to 10 times 10 to 15 times sweep, sweep and sweep. All right.

Then the last one here coming in. Peter Sticky. Okay. So starting in a sickle and then pressing out the lateral side, sweeping out and out. That same image again, that arch long toward the big toe and sweep, sweep. I'll just take two more and they're, and then finally both feed in so they can have a shared experience for something. We're just going to do five flex and point with both feet and then again, checking the knees so we're not locking them down to the floor.

A little soft there, and then press long arches, heel the toes, reach your heel forward, reach the heel forward and press the ball of the foot. Extend the toes again, like cat claws coming out, and then peel back and reach that heel underneath. Three more. You could keep going with circles of your ankles, windshield wipers, maybe another class and press and forward. One more time. I hope your feet feel warmed up. A little worked out. And again, if you want to say for jump board, I'm going there next or save this for another day. Thank you.