DON'T MISS A THING

When working out, you often think about the importance of proper form in order to avoid injury. However, you’d be overlooking another important factor – your footwear. Every step, movement, and motion you make during your workout goes through your feet, so having unsuitable footwear may cause more exercise-related injuries like those below.

Ankle Sprains

Wearing poorly designed footwear when working out won’t give you the stable, supportive platform you need when exercising. One of the first places to suffer from a lack of suitable shoes will be your ankle. You can easily develop an ankle injury when performing a variety of exercises due to the lack of support from your footwear. 

It’s much more likely that you roll over your ankle because of the poor footwear choices. Try to look for footwear that has decent ankle support if you are prone to twists and sprains, especially if you’re jogging or running.

Knee Pain

You might think experiencing knee pain can’t be related to your shoes, but the problem often starts at the feet in a variety of different ways. Poor arch support from your shoes might lead you to think it could only cause ankle pain, but without that proper support for your fee,t it can cause a domino effect for the rest of your legs.

It could cause your ankle to roll, rotating your lower legs inward, which leads to a misalignment within your knee joint – the result being inflammation and pain in your knee joint. That’s why you need to take arch support into account when shopping for new gym shoes to avoid adding stress to your knees.

Shin Splints

Runners, dancers and athletes will know the feeling of shin splints. The force of your foot striking the ground over and over generates a shock that can be 2-3 times your body weight, so doing this over and over – like when running – or with a lot of additional weight, is a lot of force for your bones to handle. 

Without adequate shoes acting as a cushion for your legs, you can see why, over time, stress builds up on your bones and leads to inflammation and injury. You want the most cushioning possible and should replace your footwear when it’s starting to look a little worn out.

Plantar Fasciitis

An excruciatingly painful yet extremely common condition people suffer from, plantar fasciitis can be controlled (or made worse) by the footwear you choose to wear. When the tendon is overstressed, it develops these tiny tears that can cause huge amounts of pain – so we want to choose footwear that helps relieve any of that pain and not cause more.

Without proper support, our feet will flatten more, causing the fascia to stretch and overwork, leading to that chronic pain so many of us know well. Avoid flat, un-cushioned soles and choose shoes that have inbuilt arch support and extra cushioning under the heel.

The connection between your footwear and injuries you may suffer from may seem unlikely, but it’s very real and massively impactful. Just switching up what shoe you wear or your next run could significantly reduce any pain you might feel and even reduce the likelihood you’ll develop any of these commonly occurring exercise injuries.

Feature Image by Alexandra Tran

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