If I had only 15 minutes with someone to help them move and stand with more ease, but was not allowed to assess anything or ask about their injury history, I think the most impactful thing to do would be…
Teach them how to pronate their feet.
Pronation is not the devil, but the devil is in the details.
Pronation is an important motion the foot must be able to do as we walk. Contrary to what your orthotics person may have told you.
With each step, the foot gets just one chance to pronate. Could you missing out on the important benefits of this moment in time? (more about that below, read on!).
At some point in my work with most clients, I know I’ll do eventually take them through an exercise to show them how to access a healthy pronation, its just a matter of when.
I think that the world of therapy and movement professionals is opening up to the idea that pronation is a healthy movement to promote, with much thanks to the work of Gary Ward. Which is awesome.
However…
Just rolling your foot IN is not the same as pronation.
Do you know the difference?
Eversion (rolling onto the inside of your foot… I know, it seems like it should be called INversion, just deal with the counterintuitive language), is the frontal plane component of pronation, not the whole shebang.
My intention with this blog post is to highlight the diffrences between pronation and eversion of the foot, so that you can liberate your feet and wake up their muscles instead of living with a problematic chunk at the end of your leg.
So before you read any further, stop what you’re doing (unless you’re saving your baby from being eaten by a dog or something) and follow along with the video below. Let’s see how well your feet move. Are you just everting, or are you actually pronating?
The clip is from day 2 of my Liberated Body workshop: Foot mechanics day, in which we explore healthy pronation and supination of the foot.
In fact, embracing pronation is often the biggest take-away for my students. One said: “I was convinced that pronation was a horrible thing until this class!”
Pronation is a tri-planar movement
Eversion describes only the frontal plane aspect of pronation
The main difference between pronation and eversion, in super simple terms (because my brain needs things to be simple):
Do you roll inwards on your foot, dump your knee wayyy inside of your big toe, and lose contact with the 5th metatarsal head on the floor? That’s eversion of the whole foot, not pronation.
Check out these images:
Are you doing the right thing the wrong way?
As with anything, attention to nuance is the key for success. We could be doing the “right” thing the wrong way,
Like when I first tried a low carb, high fat diet in 2013ish because that’s what the whole internet was doing… No one told me how easy it was to eat 12483275939 calories of fat a day and gain weight on a “fat-loss” diet. Oops.
Could you be thinking you’re pronating, but just smashing the shit out of your first met by dumping all your weight onto it, with no muscles managing the situation?
Here’s one more nuanced pronation “DO” and “DON’T” that I hope you picked up from my video: We DO want the knee to go slightly inward to access foot pronation, but we DON’T want the knee to dump inward so far it generates eversion.
Check out this video by Gary Ward (which he created to illustrate the concept from his book What the Foot, that knee over second toe is not a thing we should get dogmatically locked into because it limits foot movement in gait):
Here’s your pronation vs. eversion check-list for success:
Eversion:
- No articulation between foot bones
- Foot “log-rolls” inward as one chunk
- Loss of tripod (5th metatarsal head lifts from floor)
- No change in muscles length or experience loading/stretching under foot
- Joints remain in same position, nothing decompresses/compresses
Pronation:
- Articulation between the foot bones with each other and the ground
- Tri-planar motion of the foot (sagittal, frontal, and transverse plane components- eversion is just the frontal plane component of pronation)
- All three points of the tripod in contact with the floor
- Muscles on the bottom and inside surfaces of foot, and back of the ankle load and lengthen
- Joints on the bottom and inside surface of the foot open and decompress.
Here’s a slide from my Liberated Body workshop day 2 presentation that outlines what we’re looking for in healthy pronation and supination:
Why is pronation actually useful?
Just to clarify: PronatING is great. Being stuck in pronaTION, the noun, is not so great.
Pronation is like going to Wal-Mart- Get in, get what you need, and get out as quickly as possible.
Here are a three amazing things our body gets from healthy pronation (but does not get from rolling in, aka eversion):
Natural lengthening and loading of the muscles under the foot with each step: Got tight feet? Stretching not really helping? Rolling fascia out feels good, but not changing anything? Foot pronation is the movement that naturally allows the muscles under your foot to lengthen with each step. Got plantar fasciitis? Letting your feet pronate could be a game changer for you.
Extensor chain (dem glutes) load: Looking for more ease and power with each stride? Or to explode up from a squat position? Or land from a jump with more control? At the same moment in time that we pronate our foot in gait, the entire extensor chain of the lower body loads up. Calves load to generate plantarflexion, distal quads load to generate knee extension, and proximal glutes and hamstrings load to generate hip extension. Want to jump better and run with more ease? Make sure your feet can pronate well.
Free your neck and jaw: Got jaw tension, TMJ issues, and a stiff neck? At the same moment in time that your foot pronates in gait your jaw and cervical spine decompress. Could lack of pronation be one piece of your cranky neck puzzle? I wrote a little thing/made a little video about this so you can self-asess this for yourself.
And more…
Conclusions?
Pronation and eversion (rolling in on the foot) are not the same. One is a useful experience for the whole body, the other just feels uncomfortable.
Eversion is just one component (frontal plane) of a healthy, three dimensional pronation.
Losing the foot tripod makes or breaks a pronation. And a tea towel might be your new best friend.
Pronation has important movement repercussions for the body, such as allowing us to mobilize our feet naturally with each step, helping us engage our glutes better, and even freeing our neck and jaw tension.
Wal-Mart sucks.
Want to learn more?
I think you’ll really love Wake Your Feet Up, an online course by Gary Ward that teaches foot mechanics in a way that even my simple brain can comprehend.
He designed this course for folks who want to learn more about their foot mechanics and explore exercises to give their tootsies back their full movement potential. This online course is appropriate for all humans with feet, not just movement and therapy professionals who can speak biomechanics.
Ok I realize this post makes me seem like a huge Gary Ward fan-girl. I kinda am. Deal with it. I think he was my dad in a past life.
That’s all for now, movemet pals. I’d love to hear if you discovered anything new about your feet: Are you pronating well, or just everting? And if you can get your feet pronating well, what does it feel like for your feet, and the rest of your body?
Leave a comment, or shoot me an email, and let me know 🙂
