Training Your Wheels

Posted On December 11, 2016

I am a firm believer in my own made up Good Wheel Theory (GWT). What is GWT? It states that a car with the most glamorous powerful engine, but without good wheels, is useless as a pet rock. Same goes for the human body, you could have the most powerful hips and legs but without good feet, you ain’t going nowhere.

With that being said, when I start with a new athlete, I begin with feet training; following with my car analogy, my focus is training their wheels. The fundamentals of being a good athlete lie in their proficient ability to run, hop, jump, and land. Without proper foot strengthening, this is not possible and weak feet can lead to knee, spine, and hip problems down the road.

There are 206 bones in the human body; each foot contains 26 bones. So if you carry the 5, divide by Z and take the integral of *, the feet hold 25% of the bones in the body. Not only that the feet contain 20 muscles, 33 joints and over 100 liagments. So what that really means is that the feet are even more complex than your wife or your girlfriend.

The foot, as I heard it described, is one of the greatest suspension systems that nature has created. Strong feet are able to absorb, store, and reclaim energy so that we can run faster, jump higher, and land safely.

Okay Okay Dave, you sold me on feet training; where do I start? Glad you ask, because you found your guy to take you to the promised land of phalanges, metatarsals, and tarsals; in other words, the land of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob of feet.

Here are 5 things you can work on to stretch and strength your feet:

1) 3 Seizas: Elevated, curled, and squatted