Injuries are piling up! In week 2 of the NFL regular season alone, we saw a number of players go down including stars Saquon Barkley and Nick Bosa. How’s your fantasy team looking now? The majority of these injuries were sustained in the lower body including high ankle sprains, hamstring strains, and even more ACL blow outs! What’s the one common link connecting all of these injuries? The foot.

We Can’t Control Chaos

As a recovering ankle taper, I understand the ramifications of binding up a joint that is designed to absorb and distribute forces through the rest of the body. When we lock up these joints, in the form of restrictive, poorly designed cleats, orthotics, or white medical tape, we reduce the movement capacity of the 33 joints in the foot and ankle. Throw another tape job on top of the athletic shoe, and now we have Ferrari engines driving with wheel locks. It’s like trying to press the accelerator harder and harder with the parking brake on.

Well, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It must go somewhere. If the bones of the foot are restricted from flattening and spreading out within the restrictive shoe, they become limited in attenuating impact forces experienced in the game. These resultant forces will bleed into the next available joint or structure that may not be ready to handle such large stresses, like the space between the tibia and fibula (syndesmosis joint) implicated in high ankle sprains.

The Break in the Chain

The foot also generates torsional translation of energy, like wringing out a towel. These spiral pathways occur at the knee to dampen forces traveling to the hip. Once again, an overly restricted foot and ankle will inhibit these natural rotational patterns from being generated. We then see wholesale collapse of the foot and buckling of the knee, resulting in excessive strain, and often destruction, of the ACL when the athlete attempts to cut or change direction.

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What about those annoying recurrent hamstring strains? A foot that is stuck in one position through the use of orthotics trying to control motion, will direct forces to one area of the foot, usually the outside edge near the 5^thtoe. This is like never rotating your tires. One surface of your tire will continually take a beating, eventually leading to a blowout. This is what happens to your biceps femoris, the most common of the hamstring muscles (located on the outside area of your thigh). It is constantly being used, over and over again, to reduce or dampen forces as the athlete slows down to brace for impact or during an all-out sprint.

As you can see, this excessive rigidity imposed on the foot and ankle through unnecessary bracing or other attempts to control or limit the natural movement capabilities of the foot is going to lead to problems up the chain.

Master Your Movement: Fix Your Feet 

So, what’s the solution? Obviously, we can’t have 250+ pound beasts running around on a field without shoes on (as much as I would personally love to see that happen). Victory loves preparation. The key is in providing these athletes with the strategies and the opportunity to improve the function of their feet off the field so they can do their job on the field.

Want to learn more? Check out my series on Foot Health linked below and try out the daily movement therapy program Iron Flex, barefoot of course 😉.

TRY IRON FLEX NOW: 7 Day Risk Free Trial

Are you an Iron Flex Athlete? How are you enjoying the program so far?

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