How I fixed my flat feet…

Wearing insoles in your shoes is no fun. The insoles never fit perfectly unless they are custom made. You get blisters after long runs before it creates chafing. I was also experiencing pain when I was hiking/walking for long durations, so the insoles ended up into my hiking shoes and at some point in my daily walking shoes. The issue is that they were not fitting exactly and every time I was changing shoes, fitting was a problem. You have to buy a bigger size just to fit your feet and the insoles well. You also have to remove the shoe inner insole which is not always possible or easy to do. Well there is no universal solution: they were custom made to my feet but customs cut to fit within my running shoes. And every year I had to get new ones, and good ones are not cheap.

Talking about weight, if you are overweight that can contribute significantly to your flat feet condition. After all, your feet arches have to support too much weight and give up under it. combine this with extreme support from shoes and weak feet muscles due to the lack of feet exercises, that’s a killer combination…

Working on your flat feet…

Do this for a while and you will fix your flat feet issue (provided you just have flat feet and not something more complicated). I didn’t do everything that was said but I will share here what I did which helped me fix my flat feet. In fact, even if you have no flat feet and wear shoes all the time, it’s worth putting effort in strengthening your feet, calves and other lower leg muscles…  I first started to do the following exercises. You will notice some of these exercises are also recommended if you start transitioning toward barefoot running:

At the same time I went to buy a pair of running minimalist shoes. After careful consideration I went for a Merrell road glove 2. It’s a zero drop road running pair of shoes. Very light. I knew however the transition would not be easy and take time. In January 2013 I had been running for 6 months with a Newton pair of running shoes. They have these dents at the front part of the sole which make them have only 6mm of drop. It had taken me months to be comfortable with them, building up strength in the calves. Essentially I had already moved to front foot strike coming from the world of hill striking. That’s a big step already. But I knew moving to minimalist shoes would be as long.

I started using the shoes to walk and took 6 months to swap the Newton with the Merrell. Moving from RFS (rear foot strike) to FFS (front foot strike) is not easy and requires time, effort and patience. Moving to minimalist is a similar effort. To be noted I started with the Merrell without insoles while at the same time I was running with my insoles in the Newton. I had to start running 2km, 3km… Slowly to get the feet right as there was also nearly no cushioning. It was about 2-3 months walking, doing strengthening exercises then 2-3 months running gradually short distances.

Don’t underestimate transition time…

At the same time I was training for Putrajaya P100 after standard chartered. My LSD for standard chartered and river jungle marathon had been done with the Newton, so were the races. For P100 training I started reaching the point where I could do 20km with the Merrell. However impossible to reach 30km without big pain in the calves. I wasn’t quite ready. And that’s LSD slow pace ! Imagine a race. So I ran P100 with the Newton and the insoles. After that I decided to go full time with the minimalist but take the time to do so.

My first race with the minimalist was a 12km in December 2014, it was good but I was still not used to race pace with minimum cushioning. It takes time to build endurance in your feet muscles and calf. After this race I even experienced some slight pain in the feet heels on the left  foot. I went too fast on that and probably was heel striking due to the excitement of the race. After 1-2 weeks of rest, it went away. I then started running more barefoot starting with short distances while for my running I kept the minimalists but focussing on having a good running gait, trying to have a high cadence (180bpm), … You can read the posts on barefoot running for more info on this.

I have to say it was slow and tough ! My feet sole skin is very soft hence it took a while to build some harder skin. Don’t be disappointed it does take time. But time is needed to build your muscles to a stronger level. From 1km to 10km it took me about 3 months. I had to fight blisters that were coming whenever I was increasing the max ran distance or when I was increasing the pace. In any way I was close to my usual distance or speed with shoes.

However it helped. When running barefoot on the road or dirt, you feet soles get dirty and you can see where you actually which part of your feet was touching the ground. And one day I realized that my arches were clean. The only reference was when I started to work at strengthening my feet muscles. There was no arches as I could not slide a finger under the arches without putting weight on the finger. Now I can slide a finger with no weight. Technically my flat feet are fixed.

Recently in June I ran 30km barefoot at back to endurance and 26km with the minimalists. I ran 70km in minimalist and sandals at route 68, 50km in minimalist at king of sungai Lembing. I guess it’s a definitive goodbye to shoes insoles. However you need to keep the exercises and working out Rhodes toes and arches as a preventive maintenance practice…

What next for now ? I’m trying to run barefoot on longer distance and different surfaces while getting used to run with the Luna sandals. Running barefoot is not really possible on some surfaces or when it’s too warm in the afternoon. Also for trails I run with minimalist and once I master the road in sandals I might try the trails in sandals.