Hello, and welcome to our Balanced Body podcast here at EHS Pilates in San Francisco.
My name is Nancy Myers, and we have Michelle Moday helping me out today as my lovely foot
model.
We're going to introduce to you the functional foot plates.
These were invented by Jean Claude West, who is an amazing movement practitioner in
Marin, and the functional foot plates are similar to your rotation discs in that they
rotate.
What makes them unique is they also have slight instability front to back, so if you're not
at the axis point of the foot, you will get that feedback by tipping out.
The first sequence we're going to show you on the functional foot plates is done seated.
We're going to line Michelle's foot up.
There's a back notch here that we're going to line up with the achilles, then the axis
point of the foot right where the ankle comes down into the foot, and then the second toe
lines up with this front notch.
We're going to place her foot, line up the achilles, the subteller, and the second toe.
We get to see degrees here.
There's a reading of degrees of rotation, and where I would like Michelle to be is
around 5 to 7 degrees of external rotation, and see if she can maintain that.
Now we're going to isolate this movement to below the knee, so I don't want her to
move the knee, and we're going to have you use this rotation without sickling the foot,
keeping the foot flat on the plate.
The foot is going to have a tendency to roll out, and we want you to keep contact of that
first metatarsal, even if you have to assist them in doing so, because we don't want to
have the ankle go into supination, and external, and internal.
Here we're hopefully mobilizing that head of the tib fib here.
You can see if there is movement happening or not from that joint level, because there
should be movement from that joint when the foot is internally and externally rotating.
As she internally rotates, you'll also notice that this is a nice strengthener for that
medial arch.
It's a nice functional strengthener for that medial arch, opposed to those old toe scrunches
and towel scrunches, because you don't want to pattern that constriction of the toes.
You just want it to be from the actual arch.
Now we're going to move on to the standing work with the functional foot plates.
I'm going to have Michelle go ahead and come on up to standing, and we're going to place
your heel and line up the achilles with the back notch of the foot plate.
There's the axis point right at that sub-taller, and second toe lines up with the front notch.
Now carefully, because this is a moving surface, step up with the other foot onto the foot
plate.
Obviously, you would not do this with someone that has a balance challenge, or give them
something to stand on, or hold on to.
Now the first thing I want you to do is just stand here and relax, letting your body go
into its natural position where it likes to go.
Don't try to change anything.
I would like to see where you just are in space.
The foot plates have degrees of extension, or I keep saying extension, rotation.
So you can see that on Michelle's left foot, she is in 30 degrees of external rotation,
and on that right side, she's about at 10.
What's considered normal range of motion that we want for actual proper gait mechanics
is anywhere from 5 to 7 degrees of external rotation from the foot.
So if we can get her back in toward 5 to 7 degrees without torquing the knee, so you
don't want to force that.
If they don't have the internal rotation from the hip joint, and it ends up torquing
the knee, then you're going to have to just work your way in.
So I'm just going to bring awareness to where I would like you to try and maintain that.
And what do you feel, just trying to maintain that 5 to 7 degrees?
I feel inner thighs.
Inner thighs is what you will hear most of the time.
So that's a good way just to cue in to inner thigh, and to start realizing what she needs
to work on, that will help you guide your session as to what she needs to work on in
the rest of the Pilates session.
So bringing awareness.
If you are working with a dancer and you want to work on external rotation, you'll notice
that if you were to tip your weight slightly forward, that that plate hits the front of
the wood, and back.
And again, the plate will hit the back of the wood.
So you really have to be balanced on that axis point for the rotation to happen.
Now I would like you to keep your left foot straight ahead, and then just the right goes
in to external rotation, and back in, and alternate sides, you get external rotation
while stabilizing, and external.
And of course we're looking for any rotation in the stabilization side, any lateral shift,
any hike, but just really trying to make that happen at joint level.
Now for the next exercise, I'm going to have you slide one of the functional foot plates
forward in a natural step distance.
So carefully step off of here, and we will bring one foot plate forward as if she just
took a step.
And carefully come back on to the plates, I will help hold that still for you as you
step up, and then the other plate.
Again we're going to see what happens when she's in a natural step distance on these
two rotational surfaces.
This left foot still wants to go out into that 30 degrees of external rotation.
And if we then saw her walk, you may see that that side is the one that likes to go into
that medial whip.
It goes into external rotation.
So just being able to stay in this position, you're feeling an inner thigh.
So this helps to point out what she needs to work on in order to bring that external
rotation back into a more functional position.
And now we're taking that into plantar flexion and back down.
And if she were not controlling this as well as she is, you would see this spin out.
So it gives you a nice tactile cue to keep them straight ahead and really cue into that
slight internal rotation from the femur and she gets better hip extension.
Thank you for joining us.
Enjoy your functional foot plates.
