What Are The Best Shoes For Back Pain

Shoes play a massive role in the way in which our body interacts with the floor which naturally has knock on effects all the way up the limb to our lower back. When it comes to lower back pain, we find the health of your feet have a real influence on some of the specific parts of rehab, such as the squat and the lunges in the program. Technical errors here reveal often longstanding errors in movement that can be attributed in part to the functioning of our feet. With this in mind, it is important to consider the best footwear when it comes to our body in general, our back health and the health of our lower limb joints too.

Traditional, restrictive footwear, provides our feet with a straight jacket that prevents effective movement for a large part of our day, and gradually, leads to changes in the structure and function of our foot and lower body in general.

The health of your foot has wide-ranging effects on our body. For starters, many of the muscles that control the foot and toes, have their muscle belly in the calf, this is very important when we consider circulation and heart health. The calf pump mechanism is the way in which blood, in the low pressure venous system, is returned against gravity to our heart. Well functioning muscles of the lower leg contract and squeeze blood up the veins as they contract, and as they relax, a multitude of one-way valves prevent the blood from running back down the leg. Here these healthy muscles play a vital role in our heart health.

Next we consider the biomechanical role of these same muscles, blending with the powerful Gastrocnemius and Soleus muscles, these foot muscles with their muscle belly underneath the two aforementioned muscles work together to form a muscular chain that blends higher up with the muscles of the back of the thigh, the hamstrings. This chain is continued into the gluteal muscles and on into the lower back and so on. This muscular chain forms a powerful supporting structure for the strength of the lower back and lower limbs. Involved in everything we do on a daily basis, from getting out of bed, to standing and walking, these chains form the backbone of support for our lower back.

When we consider traditional footwear and the straight jacket it places on the foot, these important muscles we’ve just mentioned become inactive and through this disuse, they begin to weaken. A weak link in the chain means that they do not play their role as well as they should in the tasks outlined above, as well as many other local tasks. For example, supporting your foots natural arch, or keeping your big toe in its correct alignment.

When we think of barefoot shoes, they provide minimal interference with the natural functioning of our feet and therefore maximal stimulation for these muscles, maintaining the health of this important, but often neglected region of the body.

In short, barefoot shoes could well be considered to be the best shoes for back pain, for your feet and for your health in general. In the video above we go through a few ways you can more easily introduce barefoot style shoes as let’s face it, many of us simply do not have the conditioning in our feet to make a quick shift to this style of footwear. However, with a graduated introduction you can make the change, your feet and your back will thank you!