Top Tips If You Are On Your Feet All Day

Top Tips If You Are On Your Feet All Day. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. In today’s post, I will be sharing a guest post from Christophe Champs, founder of PODO Clinic and Workshop. Christophe will offer tips to help you look after your feet and legs, especially if you are on your feet all day. We tend to put a lot of pressure on our feet and legs without even realising it, which can be exacerbated by our shoes. For example, you might have to wear restrictive shoes all day for work, heavy safety shoes, elegant heels to match your work attire or easy-to-clean plastic footwear. Your job might also involve standing for long hours, climbing many steps while carrying folders or equipment, or dashing between customers’ tables.

Top Tips If You Are On Your Feet All Day

If you’ve ever wondered which body parts will likely be the most challenged daily, the answer is your feet and legs. And yet, they are the parts we tend to look after least carefully with our busy lifestyles.

Not only that, but your occupation may also be putting additional pressure on your feet and legs, which support the rest of your body. You might have to wear restrictive shoes all day – perhaps heavy safety shoes, elegant heels to match your work attire or easy-to-clean plastic footwear. Your job might also involve standing for long hours, climbing an incredible number of steps while carrying folders or equipment, or even dashing between customers’ tables. In any event, your feet will be shod for an extended time and under a lot of pressure each day.

If this sounds all too familiar to you, here are the top tips we share at the PODO clinic to look after your feet and legs to reduce end-of-day tiredness and that ‘heavy legs’ feeling:

Include Stretches And Manipulations In Your Morning Routine

Your feet and legs will benefit from daily attention, such as stretching exercises and gentle manipulations. You may also need more stretches for your back, neck, and shoulders, depending on how you slept. Listen to your body and stretch and mobilise accordingly.

As two mornings are never quite the same, adapt your morning routine accordingly. Most importantly, remember that the benefits of a good routine come from consistency, so don’t stop and start, do something every day if you can. And you can do it from the comfort of your bed:

• Move your toes to activate your intrinsic muscles (those contained within your foot).
• Manipulate those toes to prevent any toe deformations (such as bunions, hammer toes, etc.) from becoming unreversible, which can happen when joints are seldom manipulated.
• Move your ankles to stretch the extrinsic muscles (those outside your foot, which are connected to your lower leg and help control the foot), doing the alphabet with the point of your feet, for instance, is a good way to ensure a complete range of movement.
• You can also spread your toes wide and push your heel as far down the bed as you can, as though you are trying to elongate your body and grow a few inches!

Setting the alarm earlier or disrupting your routine is unnecessary. Five minutes is enough, and I promise it will feel like the best investment of the day when those few minutes show short-term, mid-term and long-term benefits to your health and overall well-being.

Look After The Skin And Nails On Your Feet And Use The Right Tools And Products

Problems can come from various sources such as your own body (excessive perspiration, for example), your work environment (too warm, too cold, too wet) and the material used to make your footwear (limited space, no breathability), to name but a few.

It is, therefore, essential to remember that the skin and nails on your feet need to be nourished, moisturised, dried, kept warm and allowed to breathe.

• Use a cream specifically formulated for your foot skin, which is much thicker than that on your body or face.
• Talcum powder is a massive game-changer. Mainly, use it in shoes when you don’t wear socks or between the toes if you don’t want to end up with the athlete’s foot.
• Keep your nails short, smoothing the corners to make sure you leave no spur (which, once in your socks or/ shoes, could penetrate the surrounding skin and cause ingrown toenails and subsequent pain or infection).
• If your feet tend to sweat, take a spare pair of clean, dry socks to change into in the middle of your shift. Your skin and nails will quickly look, feel, and smell better.

Up Your Game With Your Daily Shoe Care

The state of your shoes gives away a lot about your personality and hygiene. Shoe care helps you both to look better and feel better.

Besides, expecting shoes to last without caring for them is not reasonable. Sweat, rain and mud make our shoes dirtier than a toilet seat. And a cycle in the washing machine/tumble dryer won’t help, as that will negatively affect the glue and stitching and make the shoes shrink.

Rotating your shoes is always a good idea as, after 12 hours of abuse, they might benefit from a day off. However, if you are not a shoe-shopping addict and spend your week in the same pair, then make sure you nail the following tips:

• Leave a wooden shoe tree in your shoes overnight to avoid the leather crisping and cracking and subsequently allowing water to come in.
• Choose a complex wood shoe tree (as opposed to cast iron or plastic), as this will absorb the humidity of your sweat, the rain or the shoe polish you have just applied.
• Polish in the evening. Polish products can make your footwear humid, while your skin and nails prefer a dry environment for as long as possible. So, polish your shoes in the evening, then they will be dry when you put them on in the morning.
• Check the heel and overall shape of the footwear. Surprisingly, this protects your feet, legs, and joints up to your neck. This is because any shoe that is out of shape will mislead your feet – your only foundation. The consequences will impact all the joints above the ankles, knees, hips, back and neck. And even if you have orthotics, they are pointless in shoes that mislead them. You will waste time and money, and they will not correct your discomfort.
• Replace any broken parts. Broken laces must be replaced, and shoes with worn-down heels must be re-soled. If you want to save on buying new shoes, keep an eye on the ones you have and ensure you know a good cobbler.
• Stop sliding your feet in and out of your shoes without using their laces. Your ankle will lack support, and your heels will move inside the shoes building up rough calluses. Plus, your shoes will get out of shape and mislead your foot, messing up your biomechanics, posture, balance, and gait.

Take A Walk

As much as sitting for hours isn’t great, standing still or stepping around in closed spaces on hard floors with stairs here and there is also quite damaging for your joint health, not to mention your blood and lymphatic flows.

So, for better blood flow and to fight that familiar heavy leg sensation, go for a walk at the end of the day – one where you are not loaded with bags or in a rush because walking is the best exercise for both your physical and mental health. Walk hands-free (with a backpack, if needed) to allow your arms to swing and offload the body weight applied to your feet and legs.

Conclusion

It’s essential to look after your feet and legs daily. Start today and commit to sticking with it. Adopt a morning routine for your muscle and joint health. Always keep your shoes in great shape because as much as your footwear protects your feet, it also restricts them. Look after the skin and nails on your feet, using specifically formulated products that allow your skin and nails to “breath”. And add a gentle, relaxing walk to your evening routine.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Talk soon

About The Author

Christophe Champs is an expert in Biomechanics and the founder of the PODO Clinic and Workshop. Christophe works with clients to help address postural and biomechanical issues that are causing pain or putting a client at risk of injury. By testing both the moving gait and the still posture, Christophe can correct misalignment and asymmetry by creating custom-made orthotics to suit the exact needs of each client.

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