HIGH HEELS…FASHION VERSUS FUNCTION

 

Right, ladies – this one is aimed at you…….

If you’re going to wear high heels, then please take note of your posture in and out of the heels. Simply put, unfortunately we were not designed to wear heels under the back foot.

Recently, a physio and I encountered an interesting client profile suffering from chronic back pain. Bare feet postural analysis (normal protocol) displayed marked spinal curvatures and increased forward head posture, rounded shoulders and thoracic kyphosis (mid upper spine angle). However, once in her 3inch heels, her spinal curvatures decreased, head came back to neutral and shoulders retracted. Her bodies’ posture had literally adapted to the heels lift. This is scary to say the least. First, I’ve heard of this (and NO this is not a good thing!)

Tips

  • Take your shoes off once in the office, at your desk – have a golf/tennis/ acupressure ball under the desk and use this to self-massage your arches. Apply pressure to the ball and roll back and forth. Feels great.
  • Wear trainers to work and keep your heels for the office only.
  • Reduce the height of your heels.
  • Wear bare feet around the house to have your body normalize.
  • Stretch and roll your hip flexors (top front of the thigh / hip and quadriceps), these muscles shorten and tighten when in heels, tilting the pelvis anterior.

Richard Earney

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *