Are Flat Feet Causing Your Knee Pain?

Sometimes, it may not always be obvious that you have flat feet, as your arches may appear to have shape when you are standing upright. However, when moving the motion can cause them to flatten. In order to maintain your balance, your body may rock or twist your knees. These have only a very limited range of motion and twisting can cause many problems.

If you look at your shoes, and then have serious wear on the inner sides, it is a clear sign of that you may have flat feet.

A good idea is to get a friend to take a picture of your feet in parallel stance, from the back. You will then be able to see whether or not you are rolling in from the heels, with your arches pushed toward the floor. It is good to try and spot if your heels and kneecaps lean and turn inwards when you are standing. You must be standing in a relaxed stance, without your thighs being held rigidly. If you then turn your feet outwards, they may adjust someone, and the heels will pull straighter, with the arches lifting slightly. This can be helpful in avoiding knee injury.

Unfortunately though, this exercise alone is not enough to correct this. Just lifting the arches up by rolling your feet outwards is also not a good correction.

My main advice would be to locate and try and strengthen the smaller muscles in your feet. This will hopefully help your flat feet and send their workload upwards, toward the muscles in the calves and shins. You can roll your feet and try to squeeze them almost into a fist by pulling you toes downwards and then alternating this by stretching your toes upwards.

If you often experience pain in the ankles, lower legs or knees, it is a good idea to see either a Osteopath. They may give you orthotics, which are shoe inserts that are quite supportive, and even a heel counter, which is an insert in your shoes heel that will help to stabilize your heels, just for every day shoes. This will also help to prevent you from twisting your ankles.

Another common cause of a slight roll inwards when the foot moves is Morton's foot. This is when you have a larger second toe then your big toe. This often also happens when you jump. This may seem surprising, as the weight transfers away from the feet in these movements. However, this happens very often every dance class, and causes uneven pressure in the bones and foot muscles.

It is a good idea to try to have the weight in your feet spread equally, from the centre of the heel, big toe joint and little toe joint. This will give a level base, which is like the platform a house could be built up on, for your skeleton to balance above.

Another useful practice is Tai Chi. Some of the older, more traditional styles have a group of practices often called the foundation exercises. These are used to program your body to move more naturally and remove bad movement habits. A good teacher can work wonders in helping to correct these sorts of problems. You may have to hunt as most Tai Chi is taught fairly superficially, but there are teachers who will be able to stop problems almost instantly.