Ready for Summer – How to choose awesome shoes for your fitness kick!
Ready for Summer - How to choose awesome shoes for your fitness kick!
It’s that time of year where we look to putting away the winter Woolies and start pulling out the T-shirt’s and shorts. For many of us summer means trips to the beach a pool or somewhere else that requires us to bare more than we normally would hide away in winter.
This often means we also start getting back to fitness. Diving into exercise sometimes we are less prepared than we should be and we end up with foot or leg pain. Ouchie Mumma!
At a step ahead foot & ankle care If you were to ask our team of Professional foot doctors all qualified Podiatrists where people go wrong they will tell you it’s two primary areas.
Wrong shoes for the job
That’s right you decide that your jumping into activity so you rush down to buy new kicks based on ..... umm lots of you get things really wrong from here. You choose your new shoes for training based on;
- Colour - really because you like blue?
- Based on a brand you saw your favourite marque football or tennis star wears. - They are Professional mostly because they don’t get injured much and have awesome mechanics. Both of which you may lack!
- You choose them because a fancy advertisement told you they were awesome. Ask yourself have you ever witnessed an advert that say “buy this, they are sort of ok”.
- You choose them because your friend has some and they say they are awesome! Great idea if it’s a burger joint not so great when it comes to health advice.
How you should really choose a shoe
Generally your shoe should not only fit your foot but also your activity. Feet like both shoes and activity are all different! This means you should base your decision on more than the above. Particularly colour please not colour!
Here are tips that will help:
- Flat feet generally go better with firm supportive runners. So if they say “super soft” and have nasty big air bags hanging off the sole these probably aren’t for you!
- High arched feet like cushioning but not too much. Think moderation, look for shoes described as for under pronators or high arches.
- Buy running shoes for running activities. Sounds simple but there are a lot of fashion shoes that are “runner” inspired. ASICS for example have separate fashion style shoes. Of you’ve decided to take up tennis with friends head out and get great TENNIS shoes!
- Ensure they fit! There should be a fingers width between the end of your longest toe and the end of the shoe, when standing up. Your toes should NEVER touch the end of the shoe.
So that’s the first things as Podiatrist our team are going to tell you! As you read above this is two areas that people get a tad wrong. The other is getting into activity to fast and getting injuries that stop their activity. We will chat about that next week. So see you then.
Oh if you need help with your feet ankle or leg pain or problems the team at A step ahead foot & Ankle care would be more than happy to help you.
Our team is lead by Dr Brenden Brown who is a Podiatrist with over 20 years experience in that time serving as President of the Australian Podiatry Association. You may know Dr Brenden from his regular appearances as a medical expert on foot and lower limb problems in Magazines, television shows such as The Today Show, A Current affair or The project. He’s also been a regular on radio including ABC Sydney where he is well known as Dr Foot!
If you haven't booked your appointment time for your gap-free heel pain assessment yet, please call our friendly reception team on (02) 9673 2987 to secure your appointment today.
Have you tried our Heel Pain Calculator? https://heelpaindr.com.au/
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Want more information? That's fantastic. There's stacks of videos that we've made. Look down below. There's most likely a link there, or check us out on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc., all the normal socials because we've got stacks of educational videos on heel pain and all the other conditions that we look after. Thanks and stay happy, healthy and active.
ABOUT DR BRENDEN BROWN
Founder of A Step Ahead Foot + Ankle Care in Sydney, and former president of the Australasian Podiatry Council, Dr Brenden Brown (A.K.A Dr Foot) is a wealth of knowledge on how to take care of your feet, including how to find the best shoes.
Follow him on social media:
instagram.com/askdrfoot
facebook.com/podiatristsydney
twitter.com/AStepAheadFAC
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* No medical treatment can guarantee 100% success. Registered medical and health professions in Australia are by law not allowed to guarantee success. This comes as a result of all human bodies reacting differently to treatments. Patients should thoroughly consider all treatment options available to them.
Dr Brenden’s White paper report on the “6 Reasons You Won’t Beat Heal Pain” outlines what’s stopping you from beating this and tips on how to stop it in its tracks!