Heel no!
Our bodies adapt most strongly to what they do most often. If you slouch in a chair all day but do an hour of gym work you will most probably have a posture that reflects the shape you have been in for 8 plus hours than the strong stances and powerful poses you assumed in the gym for an hour. So we should focus on being in a better position more of the time. In the previous example sitting with a neutral spine will minimize the impact of sitting on your body, but that topic has been covered before and is a lot more obvious than the next one. Imagine if when we then did stand up, walk around and get active that we moved about on tip toes, what would happen? What would our body become accustomed to? It would get used to having shortened calves and achilles tendons which would in the end cause ankle mobility issues which can stop you moving well. If we were always on our tip toes we would need to extend or arch our back slightly to be level and not be leaning forward. Imagine if we maintained that position with flat feet it would look like we were bent backwards! Walking around like that would cause back pain and degenerative discs among other things.
Now this isn’t just some imaginary scenario, most of us actually do this because most shoes that we wear have built up heels or a high heel to toe ratio. No I’m not talking ladies high heels even though they are the most obvious example. Even shoes with a couple inches at the heel will cause the problems previously mentioned.
There are times that elevated heels may be beneficial like if you run a certain way or if your squatting heavy weights, but just walking around and general training? There’s no need and that’s what you’re doing most often. So the take home message, next time you go shoe shopping opt for the flat converses instead of the mountainous heels of those air max trainers!
Jas Sandhu
Better Body Group, Sevenoaks
