Functional Feet Meet Meyer's Line
If shoes were designed by people who actually cared about the health of our bodies, they would look and feel a lot different! To start, they would never be pointed and heels would not exist. Shoes should be wide and asymmetrical at the toes, measured with Meyer’s line in mind so that the feet have the room they need to function. Nowadays, there are many issues the feet, ankles, knees, hips, and spine take-on, which come from time spent in fashionable footwear.
Our big toes are BIG with purpose. They help us to bear and leverage our body weight, propelling us forwards when we walk or run. Big toes work best when they can function along Meyer’s line, which is essentially a line starting from the middle-back of your heel, going through the middle of your big toe joint, and out through the front of your foot. If you check out where the big toe naturally points to on the feet of children or non-shoe-wearers, you’ll notice it’s aligned to Meyer’s line.
Most of us humans follow societal norms of wearing shoes, and that is often to our own detriment. Do you wear shoes? There’s a good chance your toes and metatarsals (the long bones connecting our toes to our heel) have been squishing together for a while now, not giving your feet the space they need to function well. If our metatarsals can splay when we move, they can absorb shock well. The nerves running along them can send proper signals to make the arches contract. If we don’t give them the room they need to splay, we shouldn’t really expect them to bear our body weight without also expecting pain and ailments over time. Footwear can lead to bunions, hammertoes, fallen arches, and a bunch of other issues not even in your feet, but higher up in your body. Maybe it’s time to reassess your footwear!
A cool way to test your big toe alignment is to check it against Meyer’s Line. You can do this 30s test with just a pen, ruler, and a piece of blank paper. I made a funky 1-min follow-along video, with cool knowledge drops HERE.
The Shoe Test + Meyer’s Line Test:
Put your bare foot on a piece of blank paper. Imagine your foot in a tight shoe. Keep your toes casually squeezed together. Trace around your foot with a pen. Keep your foot where it is! Now spread your toes as wide as you can. Take a different coloured drawing tool and trace this foot shape. Phewf! Move your foot away and draw a dot at the back-middle edge of your drawing’s heel. Draw another dot at the joint where your big toe meets your metatarsal (your big toe’s knuckle). Draw Meyer’s Line, which connects these two dots, and keep the line going further out from your toes.
Results: You can see where Meyer, barefoot enthusiasts, and pediatrists wish our big toe pointed. You can also see where your toe is aligned to when it’s splayed as well as when it’s squished. If you got a bit confused along the way or would like to have my voice walk you through it, check out that video I mentioned.
Pro Tips on how to reconnect with your natural feet:
-Reassess your footwear and go barefoot whenever you can
-Try daily toe and ankle mobility and strength exercises
-Consider your age, feet condition, and activity level before moving to different shoes/ barefoot life
-Transition slowly and talk to feet-loving people lots
-If you’re looking for shoes, check out the brands Groundies, Vivobarefoots, Drifter, No(N)s, Zlatush, Wildling, Feelmax, Feelgrounds, Joe Nimble, Softstar, BeLenka, and Shamma Sandals. Most of those sell shoes for kiddies too; however kid-specific: Tikki and Affenzahn
-If you’re looking for Instagram pages that promote foot-health, check out myfootfunction and thefootcollective