Find your feet!

Photo by:  How-Soon Ngu

The tennis ball is to start bringing awareness to your feet which in turn will loosen the body up all the way into the hips and low back.

  1. Start off by taking a walk and get a baseline for how your feet feel when you walk and what your knees, hips, back and shoulders feel like as you move.
  2. Then standing or sitting with bare feet roll the tennis ball under one foot very slowly and gently. It isn’t about putting a lot of pressure through the tennis ball but about feeling the sensation of the tennis ball on the bottom of the foot. In fact if you are standing most of your weight should be on the foot that isn’t on the tennis ball. You want to do this slowly and be conscious of what you feel. This sense of sensation work to repattern the nervous system and teaching it where your foot is. That is why it is important to get the whole foot including all the toes! Do this for a minute.
  3. When finished take a walk before doing the other foot so you can feel what has shifted then do the other side! This can be done throughout your day and even while sitting at your desk to keep you back loose during the day!

Increasing awareness of our feet gives us a better sense of grounding and support from our lower body allowing our upper body to be able to rest and not try to hold us up so much! When we can connect to our feet we can also access more power from out lower body which is important when doing your workouts. Think about the way you do squats and notice next time if you are using your whole foot to do the movement! If not then you lose some of the power. Try doing to the tennis ball exercise before doing squats and see if you notice a difference in the way you do them!