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In article
<[email hidden]>, John
Yoshizawa said:I've had bad ankle problems due to gout. But recently
realized that another problem is that my feet tilt. When
golfing, which a passion I love and cannot do walking
anymore because of the pain, I noticed that I tend to
severely tilt my left foot(my right foot does this too but
not as bad) outwards. I've don't this so excessively at
times that the outside of my shoes near my baby toe wear
out a lot. I also wear out the heal sole portion of my
shoes on the outer half. The pain in my ankles today was
unbearable it was near the outside portion of the back
part of my ankle.
My questions are is this supination or pronation and will
inserts with high arches help me or hurt me? I am
thinking that they will hurt me because it raises the
inside of my foot.
Thanks for any help,
John
Some things to think about before supination and pronation.
A previous post from 2002:
You wrote:
Are you splay footed? \ / This causes the posterior tibialis
to be stretched and the arch to start to drop inward so that
after years of this the arch is no longer supported by the
posterior tibialis. When this happens the stress is put upon
the plantar fascia which is a sheath that inserts into the
metatarsals and has its origin on the front of the
calcaneus. The plantar fascia is not made take the stress
when the three muscles that maintain the arch do not do
their job because of faulty mechanics often caused by the
way we run.
___
All through last year I suffered with a pain in the ball of
the foot. Podiatrist and surgeon diagnosed it as Capsulitis
and metatarselitis respectively.
Neither of them studied my gait or stride for either walking
or running.
Interesting that you brought up splayed feet as mine are
very noticeable. It tended to get worse as I started to
walk on the side of my foot due to the pain in the ball
of the foot.
At the end of the year I started getting pain in the tendon
on the side of the knee, but below the knee, along the calf
and down to above the ankle.
So my question is: Could these two injuries be related
and could they stem from the same cause that being the
splayed feet?
Obviously you can't diagnose me online, but is this within
the realm of reason to take to a 3rd doctor?
Thanks
Ed,
Some thoughts and some rec.running addenda:
Summary: Your Piriformis May Effect Your Splay Feet and
Your Bunions
Splay Feet \ / and Bunions may have more to do with what you
do unconsciously. The way you stand may have more to do with
the muscles in your upper legs. And you never even thought
about it. Until now.
Thanks to Erik Sten for reminding me about Bunions.
The bunion is usually a result of the feet \/ rather than |
|. Keeps pushing out the cartilage out and the cartilage
calcifies and voila, le bunion. You might want to take thee
to a Rolfer or someone that does postural integration and
the problem more often than not is in the hips that create
the splay.
Leroy Perry had people rotate the heels out first to
straight the hips and then bring the feet together so they
were aligned | |.
Your Piriformis May Effect Your Splay Feet & Bunions: Thank
You LeRoy Perry
c. 2000, 2002 Austin "Ozzie" Gontang, Ph.D.
Piriformis
What it does: Piriformis rotates your thigh laterally (turns
it outward). Piriformis abducts (ab(Latin) from/away from;
duco lead, direct [ad=to or toward]) or turns the thigh away
from the body when your leg is flexed.
Piriformis is attached onto the front of the sacrum (origin)
and inserts into the top of the femur (insertion) - sort of
at the top and inward on the greater trochanter.
Piriformis does most of the work when you turn your
leg outwards.
You now can see how the hyper-tense (overly tight) gluts
which has as its job of laterally (outside) rotating the
thigh. That rotation or turning the thigh outward
So if the piriformis does most of the work when you
turn your leg out along with the gluteus max which
laterally rotates the thigh, when these muscles become
hypertonic (overly tight) they assist in rotating the
entire thigh...and the lower leg and foot also go along
for the ride.
So more than likely, you'll often see that when you stand or
walk or run through some water and look at your running foot
prints they look like:
../
\
../
\
and not
|
..|
|
..| and when you stand up brushing your teeth in the morning
or standing around not thinking about how you're standing
and you look down at your feet, you will see
\/ and not ||.
Now to correct this you you'll bring the front of your feet
\/ together ||.
But the problem is that, if you go back to what you've just
learned from the info about the piriformis and the glut max,
you'll say to yourself: "Hmmmmmmmm, if I turn the front of
the foot inward, I won't have done (never good at English
when I speak to myself) anything to the piriformis or the
glut max. How can I best effect those muscles which may be a
big part of my splay foot stance?"
Ah now I see what Ozzie's talking about. And you'll say to
yourself, "Oh, that's why Ozzie thanks Leroy Perry to this
day for showing him some of his chiropractic intuition and
folklore at a workshop which helped Ozzie understand how to
effect the foot at the origin of the splay footed problem"
When you are standing \ / and want to get your feet to align
| |
1. View your feet. Note if the feet are \ / evenly or more \
| or | / or some ankle between _ _ and | |.
2. If your feet are \ /, turn your heels outward so that if
you were looking straight on into a mirror you would not
be able to see the inside of your heel like you can when
you look at your feet and you're standing \ /.
3. Now that you can't see your heels because you're standing
| |, lift one leg and bring it to a position so that it
is directly aligned underneath your hip. Think of the
legs as two columns upon which your pelvic is supported.
4. By turning out the heels first, you're countered the
lateral rotational tendency of the piriformis and the
glut max. (Now isn't that sweet.)
Two more observations:
5. If you stand in front of a mirror and tighten your butt
muscles you'll see the thighs rotate to the outside. You
don't even know you're using the piriformis since it's so
deep inside...just like you know know you're using the
psoas to kick a foot ball or kick your dog.
6. In "Preparation" in Tai Chi, you'll notice that you start
\/ and then to get into your "Beginning" stance you
rotate the heels out to get into | |. When that happens
your knees when they bend, bend straight ahead. Ahhhhhh.
Well maybe you don't say "Ahhhhhh" to yourself because you
don't know what the hell I getting at.
Okay, Okay.
If you chronically have a tendency to have hypertonic
piriformi and glutei Maximi (Latin - nominative plural) you
can now relate to why people call you "tight assed."
Now trying to run like that \ /, and now ever thinking that
your legs and feet are suppose to track | |, gives you some
sense of the system upon which you stand, walk and run, and
realize that those unnecessary torques and twists do have
their effects over the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months
and years because you're doing it all the
time....unconsciously.
You're practicing to stand in improper form and style and
you're not even thinking about it, let alone doing something
about except when you consciously stretch and workout...and
when you compare that to all the unconscious exercise you do
by the way you walk, stand, sit and move....you realize that
7 or 10 or 20 hours a week of exercise is nothing. Because
if you worked out 20 hours a week, slept 56 hours a week,
you still have over 90 hours a week that you're awake.
Albeit unconscious, when you are sitting, standing, walking
and moving without awareness: It's not what you do that gets
you in trouble. It's what you do wrong and don't know that
you do wrong or incorrectly...all of those unconscious
seconds...that gets you in trouble. Every injury, every
overuse syndrome, every ache and pain you have related to
physical movement started with a millisecond of unconscious
improper movement...that you did but didn't know that you
did, because you never thought about it because you were
unconscious thinking or worrying or daydreamsing about
something else.
It's not what you know that gets you into trouble. It's what
you know that just ain't so.
Sometimes it feels good to be a pain in the cerebral glutei
and piriformi of people who suffer from psychosclerosis
(English: hard headedness). I know I suffer from it, doesn't
everybody? Never mind.
---end of article----
A post to rec.running from Rich Barkan:
been there, done that
I'm picking up this thread in the middle. I read with
interest Ozzie's recommendations about foot position and had
some flashbacks to my own nightmare.
I had a piriformis issue back in 91-92; from what I recall,
the muscle was essentially atrophying from underuse. The big
muscles were doing all the work due to my logging heavy
effort daily long runs without any real cross training,
i.e., overuse leading to a breakdown in my form (which
wasn't that great to begin with).
After a couple of months of no running and physical therapy
(including guided stretching, ice, electrical stimulation
and voodoo), I was able to begin running again, paying
attention to foot placement.
The key to prevention of a reoccurance has been a
combination of awareness of my footfalls, my trusty leather
orthotics, and, most important, consistent stretching
(before or after the workout) and varied workouts. Mixing
speed, hills, easy days and long runs. In short, proper
training and the yoga-position piriformis stretch teamed
with stretching of the other muscles in the area that the
Dr. Maffetone doctor has indicated
The proper stretch was the key, as I wasn't able to find the
right position until the PT showed me.
regards Rich Barkan not a doctor, just an aging runner.
A post to rec.running from GILBOA <Phil Maffetone> who
wrote:
Good information from Ozzie. Just to throw in one item, and
demonstrate that it's sometimes more complicated, many
other muscles also serve as lateral rotators, including the
psoas, illiacus, sartorius, some of the adductors,
quadratus femoris, internal and external obturator, and
superior and inferior gemellus. Most of these muscles,
including the piriformis, are easily evaluated with manual
testing by a skilled practitioner. Sorry to get carried
away. Phil Maffetone
And that's why I've hung around rec.running for almost 8
years: to have my answers questioned, clarified,
illuminiated, and rectified. Oz
