- You know why Cinderella lost her shoe?

Because her feet hurt, of course.

Foot dysfunction places stress on your entire kinetic chain, causing joint compensations and inefficient movement.

I'm Cassy, and today's Quick Fit class will work to address some of the causes of weak or fallen arches.

[bright music] Have a small towel handy for one of the moves we'll be doing shortly.

Your doctor knows your particular condition best, so of course, defer to him or her and proceed with care, but if you'd like to try this class and you have flat feet or plantar fasciitis, remember your feet are weak.

Begin with just a few repetitions of each exercise and work up to more over time.

Also, have a nice mat to work on, especially if you've lost the padding on the bottoms of your feet.

We'll start by just stretching your toes apart as best you can.

Lift and stretch apart.

Many professionals are suggesting that acquired flat feet, as opposed to a condition from birth, is linked to too many hours in shoes with thick souls and supports.

All right, keep trying to stretch them apart.

You can even use your hands to try to help stretch your toes apart.

Now let's cross your legs at the ankle or the knee, wherever it's comfortable, and let's work on this move, which we really don't go around trying to do consciously.

It is a move that you need to be able to do to walk properly with correct mechanics.

Inversion and eversion.

And this is another one where you can get your ankle up on top of your other leg and try to use your hand to manipulate.

Couple more and we'll switch.

You have a hundred muscles, tendons, and ligaments in your feet, and like all muscles and joints in the body, our foot requires daily use and opportunity for full range of motion to remain strong.

Few more, getting as much movement as you can each way.

The brain and the motor control and the muscles all have to be working together in a coordinated fashion.

This is an awkward move.

All right, I hope you have your towel handy.

Let's place it on the floor, put your feet on top, and use your toes to try to scrunch up the towel.

Scrunch it up and then stretch the toes, scrunch it up and stretch.

See how much of the towel you can get scrunched up before you have to reset.

Have you ever dropped a towel in the kitchen and you just grab it with your feet if your shoes are off?

Or maybe in the bathroom where you don't have shoes on.

I've done that before, my husband always laughs at me.

Just grab it with my feet instead of bending over.

See, there's use for flexible feet.

All right, couple more, grab and flex, and we can put the towel away.

And sit forward on your seat and have your legs a nice V right out from your hips, and let's lean on the legs.

Press some weight right down through your legs, and draw the heels back enough so that when you lift those heels, you have a nice, straight line down through your toes, to the knee, ankle, into the ball of your feet.

All right, press some weight, press some weight.

And the legs have to support all the weight.

So use some force, all right?

Now, heels down.

You get a little calf stretch here, heels up.

And heels down, heels up.

Grip the floor, your mat, your rug with your toes, lift and lower, press and lift.

Use your feet to lift your weight instead of just leaning back.

Heels down, heels up, heels down, heels up.

Alternate for two, other side.

All right, and release.

Shift a little bit in your seat so we can get onto the top of your foot.

Stretching the top of the foot and the shins, you've got your toes tucked back.

Draw your knee a little bit forward, so we're stretching the toes a little more.

And now the other way.

I call this folding, trying to get to the ball of the foot.

Really stretching through the toes.

Runners can end up with foot pain simply because the big toe has lost flexibility.

Good, back and forth.

Let's switch and do the other side.

Tuck and fold, tuck and fold.

[inhales] Once again, you control how much force you're putting down through your foot, depending on how flexible your feet are or how long you've been doing these classes.

All right, next, we'll be getting up and stretching the calves.

All right.

I'll just use the chair, and first thing I'd like you to do is draw your left leg back, press that heel down, stretching through the calf, [inhales] your Achilles tendon, press.

You can get your other foot in front of you enough, so you can really press down on the back of the chair and you've got a stable base in front of you.

Your back knee is straight.

Now shift it so there's a slight bend.

Straight and shift.

Now take this front leg and I'd like you to swing it across.

Swing.

So now what we're doing is we're stretching your calf muscles, but we're making sure we're getting in all the directions we can because your heel actually has some mobility.

And as you move like this, it stretches down by that heel bone.

All right, now take that front leg and instead of it landing right in front of the hip, cross it and go deeper into that stretch.

Okay, so your front leg is across your body.

Come out of that stretch enough that you can bend that back knee.

[inhales and exhales] Good.

And let's do the other leg.

All right, so press that heel down to the back, enjoy the stretch.

A little force down to the back of your chair.

[inhales and exhales] Shift your weight enough that you can get a little bend in that back knee.

Then straighten that leg again.

Shifting the hips forward.

You've got your knee and your foot in front of you, and adjust so that you can swing the front leg across in front of you.

Good, your back heel is still down.

And when you stop swinging, let that foot land across in front of you.

Keeping the back heel down.

Take off some of the pressure so that you can get a slight bend in the back knee.

And finishing up, great.

All right, let's work on the hips.

All right, so let's lift your outside leg.

If you're mirroring me, it's your right leg.

Just lift it slightly off the floor 'cause it's actually not a knee lift I want you to do, it's a hip lift and drop.

And when you drop your hip, the floor is slightly in the way, so that's why we're bending the knee.

But it's all about shifting through the hips, all right?

Your standing leg is the one that's actually being worked right now, along with the hip, the hip and the calf.

The muscles that control the calf are in your shin, and they go down and they control the arch.

So that's what we want to target right now.

The muscles that control your arch and your hips.

All right, weak hips contribute to an inefficient gait and also contribute to weak arches, so let's keep those hips strong.

All right, and switch legs.

So it's even better when you don't hang on at all, then you can see your arch in your foot really, really moving around as the muscles in your shins are activated.

Good.

Up and down.

[inhales and exhales] Hang in there, few more.

It's hard to imagine how much your glute medius, those are the glute muscles that come around your hip, affect your arches and your feet, but they do.

Your feet are so complex and wonderfully made that it's just all so interconnected.

Your feet affect your hips as well.

All right, two feet down.

Now this is something fun.

I want you to stand so that you can see your feet and then squeeze your hind end.

You might notice a slight adjustment to your arches.

When you squeeze your bottom, your thighs move out in such a way and it affects all the way down to your arches.

Okay, release, squeeze the butt, keep the feet flat.

Okay, release, inhale, [inhales] exhale.

[exhales] Good job, a few heel lifts, alternating right and left as we finish up, stretching the toes again.

And heels down, heels up, heels down, heels up, walk around a little bit.

You can do this while you're doing the dishes, talking on the phone.

Heels down and heels up.

You guys have done a fabulous job.

Now work up to a couple hours a day, moving about without shoes.

And working on these exercises several times a week, as you become accustomed to them.

And in about eight weeks, you'll begin to see improvements, not only in your feet, but up the entire kinetic chain, meaning in how your knees, hips, and back feel.

Remember, consistency is key, so come back here daily to pbswisconsin.org/quickfit to stay loose, balanced, and pain-free, because life is movement.

- Narrator: Funding for Quick Fit with Cassy is provided by Greg and Carol Griffin, founders of ElderSpan Management, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.