The other day whist running an incident occurred that I almost forgot about. Then later when reading Tim Brennen’s blog, I watched a video he links to of a tennis player twisting her ankle. The point was to demonstrate that when wearing shoes this is all too easy. And that made me realise that I’d come close to twisting mine earlier that day, but hadn’t as I had been wearing barefoot shoes. Let me explain…
A lot is made of proprioception with barefoot running. That’s the fancy word for the feedback your body is getting through your feet each time one is planted on the ground. Apparently there are nearly as many nerve endings in the soles of your feet as there are in your sexual organs, which is quite a lot. However we mask most of this by wearing shoes, especially very padded ones like modern running shoes.
The incident was that whilst out running the inside of my right foot came down on a small rock that was about an inch square. Before my full weight could come down on this, my right knee bent which allowed time for my left leg to swiftly come forward and take my full weight, therefore avoiding doing this with my right. To me it was a quick stumble and I carried on. But seeing the ankle twist video later on, the full significance of what had happened dawned on me.
What had happened was proprioception in action. The feedback from the millions of nerve endings in my feet, detected that rock just as the ball of my foot started to step on it and immediately took evasive action. Had I been wearing padded trainers I wouldn’t have felt it until my full weight was already on my right foot and by then it would have been too late. My right foot would have rolled underneigh me with my leg and body continuing over the top, resulting in a very bad twisted ankle.
But that didn’t happen, and the evasive action was so swift and involuntary that I almost didn’t register it had happened at all. I guess it also allowed my ankle muscles to stiffen in time to also help avoid a twist, which again wearing padded trainers would have numbed me to and would have been too late.
We just don’t get this kind of feedback from the ground that we are designed to get, but for the most part I guess we don’t need it. We have after all created a living environment where the surfaces are all flat. When we venture off-piste into the wilderness we’ve created boots that support our ankles, so even then it doesn’t matter if you plant your foot unexpectedly on an uneven surface, as we’ve taken care of it.
I’m now starting to wonder if the ankle support on boots are actually there to solve the problem of a lack of proprioception when walking on uneven and unstable surfaces. Maybe if my feet were allowed to feel the trail whilst walking in the country, the proprioception would stop me twisting my ankle by allowing me to take evasive action, just like in my running example.
I started this post wanting to explain how I avoided twisting my ankle whilst running but it’s made me realise that I now doubt my walking boots effectiveness over my own feet – if I allow them to do what they were intended to. Food for thought.