Align Your Feet

Align your feet like tires on a car - with toes pointing forward.

When starting to assess your body's strength, flexibility and balance, it's useful to learn to make adjustments to your alignment by arranging your skeleton so that your muscles can move in ways that minimize damage and promote longevity.

You align the wheels on your car to optimize its performance. But you don't lock those wheels into that “perfect” position. Once aligned, the wheels can better turn and respond to the road and driving conditions.

Try this: begin to correct your habitual "turnout" by lining up your feet more like tires on a car. Toes are pointing forward.

Do this for a week, whenever you remember.

You may notice physical sensations as you “turn on” muscles that haven’t been working for you.

NOTE *If aligning your feet causes you any pain, anywhere, do less. Maybe even let it go for now. 

When you are ready to take it one step further, try lining up the outside edges of your feet to be parallel to each other.

At first, you may need to rotate the whole leg to get your feet in line. As you work with more alignment markers, you'll learn how to drive this movement with your lower legs and feet.

Practice this simple step often each day and see how it begins to shift the movement of the rest of your body.

Find more ideas for better movement in my twice-a-month emails. And learn about classes, workshops and individual coaching at Your Movement Project.