Your feet are the mediators between your body and the ground. So they must be sturdy enough to support the body’s weight while being flexible enough to conform to varied terrain. Foot design meets both of these requirements perfectly by consisting of 36 bones for flexibility, bound tightly together by a web of ligaments for strength. Your feet literally take a pounding everyday, with the average person taking more than 10,000 steps daily. During running or going down stairs, up to 3 times the body’s weight can come bearing down on the feet. The healthy, long term foot function requires, therefore, that the load bearing function of the skeletal system as well as the shock absorption function of the muscular system function properly throughout the entire leg.
The foot’s location at the bottom of the leg makes it subject to the greatest loadings of the body. This location also means that it is totally dependant on proper hip and knee function for directions. Should hip-leg-foot alignment become compromised, then the resulting abrasion within the joints of the ankle and feet can make every step or simply standing in place extremely painful.
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You must not resign yourself to a life of restricted mobility and discomfort, however.
The muscles surrounding the hips, legs, and ankle respond readily to structural realignment training. By taking part in a SPRC Structural Realignment Program you can restore proper leg alignment, get out of pain and get back on your feet.
Flat Feet:
Foot motion is controlled by 9 powerful muscles located along the anterior surface of the shin bone. These muscles taper into tendons which tuck under different ligaments and in a pully-like fashion control the motion of the foot.
Foot stability results from a type of tripod structure, with the weight of the body resting mainly on the heels and the balls of the feet. The bones of the feet are positioned in arches across these load bearing regions and these arches are maintained by the muscles from the lower leg. This design offers a remarkable combination of coordination, stability, and shock absorption. Should the fundamental muscle balance and tone within the foot weaken, then the arches of the feet collapse and all three of these functions are lost.
Flat feet is a more serious problem than most people realize, therefore, in that this condition can lead to a host of painful and debilitating foot ailments. (The military will not accept someone with flat feet, for example. They know that such a person will frequently be sidelined with foot problems, have little endurance and be accident prone.)
The normal response is to insert arch supports into the shoes. Although symptomatic relief can be achieved, the basic problem has not been resolved and frequently either the original symptoms return or a host of new symptoms arise. Continuous use of arch supports results in the further weakening of the responsible postural musculature of the lower legs and feet and their intrinsic load bearing and shock absorption capacity will become increasingly compromised.
The true solution is to provide proper and sufficient structural realignment training in order to the entire hip-leg-foot complex, as well as restore the arches of the feet. Just as the muscles of the lower legs can weaken and allow fallen arches to occur, likewise these muscles can be trained to restore proper foot posture. So the structural collapse of the feet and their resulting symptoms are completely reversable.