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kaberettI have been met with surprise from A and others recently, when pointing this out, so it gets to go here too:
In theory, when you are standing and indeed walking (or even cycling), you want your knees and your toes to be pointing in more or less the same direction, with your kneecap approximately in line with your second toe.
Doing this -- keeping your knee still, and rotating your foot around your ankle (yaw and roll are the relevant axes) -- activates the muscles of the arch of your foot, in ways that I at least find surprising and discombobulating, but which also make it actually possible for bits of my anatomy other than my joints to act as shock absorbers.
The thing with my particular flavour of bendy is, it's much less work to just let my toes drift outward and my arches flatten and my knees go back -- to let my joints take the strain, instead of activating my muscles and having them stabilise and shock-absorb and such. It's what I do automatically! It doesn't require me to pay attention! ... and it puts a lot more wear and stress on my joints and my muscles decondition and doing less work in the moment makes me hurt more over time.
So. Yes. Toes forward. Arch muscles engage. Isn't it weird.
In theory, when you are standing and indeed walking (or even cycling), you want your knees and your toes to be pointing in more or less the same direction, with your kneecap approximately in line with your second toe.
Doing this -- keeping your knee still, and rotating your foot around your ankle (yaw and roll are the relevant axes) -- activates the muscles of the arch of your foot, in ways that I at least find surprising and discombobulating, but which also make it actually possible for bits of my anatomy other than my joints to act as shock absorbers.
The thing with my particular flavour of bendy is, it's much less work to just let my toes drift outward and my arches flatten and my knees go back -- to let my joints take the strain, instead of activating my muscles and having them stabilise and shock-absorb and such. It's what I do automatically! It doesn't require me to pay attention! ... and it puts a lot more wear and stress on my joints and my muscles decondition and doing less work in the moment makes me hurt more over time.
So. Yes. Toes forward. Arch muscles engage. Isn't it weird.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-21 05:53 am (UTC)I suspect the reason I *haven't* had "keep your knees aligned with your toes" drilled into me, but rather something more like "point your toes forward" is related to this tendency.