Why you should have a picture similar to this of Sandra Bullock in your shoe store…. Because of the story it tells to all runners (and walkers)….. we guess that means everyone then doesn’t it ?
Note what the lovely Sandra is wearing.
Your eyes may be first drawn to the accentuation of her buttocks and calf as well as her lifted chest. In actual fact, that is what high heel shoes are designed to do.
What you might not see because you are drunk on her beauty and figure is the cost on her body from those illusion driving high heel shoes. Here is what they are doing behind the scenes:
- creating a perpetually plantarflexed foot with excessive and unnatural forefoot loading and likely increased use of long toe flexors
- sustaining tension in her quadriceps because she is purchased forward on the balls of her feet
- hyperextension loading the knees with increased lumbar lordosis which is making it a challenge to maintain adequate abdominal tone, in fact, likely inhibiting the abdominals.
Who cares right ? It all frame her glutes nicely and accentuates her bosom right ?
Blame it on Sex and the City or blame it on men who like to see women in high heels, but there is blame to dish out.
Put Sandra in some Newtons or Altra’s ……or some other zero-drop minimalist shoes and watch:
- Her heels drop redistributing normal rear : forefoot loading
- Foot intrinsic muscles begin to re-engage as the long toe flexors settle down now that she is off the forefoot
- Achilles and calf muscles lengthen to their normal state
- Tone normalizes in anterior shin compartment and toe extensors
- The foot mechanics we were born with are restored because they are in the environment we were born with…… that being that the forefoot and rearfoot are both on the same plane (flat on the ground) and thus the mechanics they were designed to engage are once again available and possible. (But it will take time to restore the lost function. Even men’s every day shoes, including traditional running shoe trainers have a ramp-delta heel lift.)
- Lumbar spine lordosis reduces, abdominals engage easier
- Psoas returns to normal length from its shortened state
- Cervical spine returns to neutral
- patellofemoral joints compressively unloads making for some happy knees
- Gluteals re-engage and take the extension from the lumbar spine and put it back into the hips where it is supposed to be achieved.
And that my friends, is why you need a picture of Sandra Bullock in your shoe store now that you know what heeled shoes are doing in the background of your body mechanics.
Bammmmm…….. The Gait Guys…….. critics of even the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood. Ivo and Shawn…….risking it all, even a dinner date with Sandra, to bring you the facts. Our only question now is, “Why Jessie James? Why ?”
Shawn and Ivo
