Foot and Toe Strength to avoid toe and fascia injuries?

[footquestion_tempname]

Hi all,

I've had some off-and-on foot and toe pain (plantar fasciitis) that I think may have been caused by the high stresses of toeing on small footholds.

While I've always thought a lot about avoiding finger injuries, and have trained my fingers to improve my performance, my foot and toe strength never even crossed my mind. On the occasional longer route, my toes and feet would feel fried long before my fingers, especially for easier grades. On boulder problems, I would just bear the pain of using small footholds.

With the collective focus that climbers have placed on finger strength, have we missed an important piece of injury prevention and performance by ignoring foot strength? From a route ethics perspective, why is it ok to buy expensive, painful, artificially downturned shoes to enhance toe strength, while applying similar modifications to fingers or hands (setting aside crack gloves) is not part of the free-climbing game?

Since I'm stuck mostly indoors for the Coronavirus I've been putting together training routines to address weaknesses that I normally wouldn't put the time into, and also have a great deal too much time to think about toe strength. So I'm adding foot and toe strengthening exercises to my routines, partly to reduce pain from prior injuries, but also out of curiosity if it can improve my performance similar to finger strength training. If I had my own indoor bouldering wall, I'd incorporate barefooted climbing for this purpose.

Has anyone else included explicit toe-strengthening workouts alongside their finger-strengthening workouts?

[MarkAnderson]

I think foot strength is important and it can be a limitation at times for certain climbers, especially those with large/long feet. Personally I've never gone out of my way to train foot strength because I've developed very strong feet (&/or toes) by simply following "the program" (I also have stubby/stocky Hobbit-like feet). I think the key for me were the first few years of periodization in which I put a huge emphasis on ARCing. I also spent the prior decade running obsessively, almost always on steep trails. That probably helped build some non-specific foot strength as well.

Anyway, if you want to build foot strength through ARCing, the way I did it was to always climb on tiny footholds, to the extent possible. At this point it may be more expedient to design a more time-efficient method, like a hangboard/weightlifting-style routine for toes. That should be pretty easy and obvious to figure out.

FWIW, I also suffered a serious sesamoid overuse-injury that resulted in fairly severe plantar fasciitis in both feet. I'm pretty sure the sesamoid injury was caused by the combination of climbing on small footholds, in 1980s-tight shoes, and running ~80 miles/week. I gave up running at that point (2007), got custom orthotics in my walking shoes, and made some modifications to my climbing shoes to ease the direct pressure on my sesamoids. The orthotics cleared up the PF, but it took a couple years to completely heal it. The sesamoid inflammation eventually went away as well, presumably from a combination of no more running, modifying my climbing shoes, and less aggressive downsizing of my climbing shoes. I no longer modify my climbing shoes and I might even consider running if I could ever think of a good reason to, but I still avoid hyper-insane climbing shoe downsizing. I can only think of one time in 12 years that I've noticed any performance issues as a result of less-than-vice-tight toe boxes, but I attribute that largely to the fact that my toes are really strong.

[footquestion_tempname]

Thanks for the candid response, Mark! It sounds like you've built up a base of toe strength from your many outdoor pursuits.

I too have been running over the years, but am taking the Covid season off due to race cancellations and to heal from overuse injuries (did my first 2 marathons in November 2019 and January 2020). I seem to have relatively weak/sensitive feet.

I'm including various therapeutic exercises, balances, and calf raises to build up foot strength in parallel with my finger strength. I'd like to build up to a one-footed toe-raise (a calf-raise on a step, but with only the toes latching the top of the step). I think a longer-term goal might be to stand on one toe, in the same vein as doing a one-finger hang.

[MarkAnderson]

Stand on one toe like a ballerina (on the tip), stand on one toe like a climber (edging in a climbing shoe), or like a dirty hippy (barefoot)?

[footquestion_tempname]

Haha the challenge is to stand on one toe barefooted, but with the foot flat like you're standing on a rock edge.

[MarkAnderson]

Interesting. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I would be concerned about hurting myself, as I would be if I tried to hold all my body weight off a single mono.

Obviously the mono thing is something I’ve tried/trained, but only because it is an essential requirement for the type of climbing I do. Otherwise I would avoid it. And even though I “must” do it, I still worry I may hurt myself in the process. Standing on a single toe barefoot is not an essential requirement of anything that I’m aware of.

Anyway, what I would recommend instead is to do it in a climbing shoe. This would be far more specific while also far less threatening (since all the toes are working together to share the load). You can make it harder by using smaller edges—also more specific.

[hangboarderjon]

I created an account, I was formerly "footquestion_tempname".

Thanks for the warning, I agree it's not something to "jump right into" (pun intended). Still, it seems to me that standing on one big toe is more realistic than hanging from one finger -- my big toe is easily twice the diameter of my fingers.

[MarkAnderson]

Ya, I see what you’re saying but also consider how you are loading each joint. Loading a finger vertically in tension is not at all the same as loading a toe with an enormous moment (torque/leverage).

[hangboarderjon]

Yeah but the torque is focused about a single pivot joint in both cases. For fingers, the pivot is one of the knuckles, while for toe, it's the ball of the foot.

In both cases, the support point for the pivot is where the stress is being transferred. In the case of the toe, the ball of the foot (and the rest of the foot that supports that) can easily support the entire body without specific training. I can stand on the ball of one foot almost as long as I want, even if I lean most or all of my weight to the big-toe side. However for a finger, without training, I can't do the same -- Even with all of my fingers wrapped around a perfectly sized bar, I can only hang one-handed for a minute or so.

[climber511]

I have big feet (13). I noticed every spring (well not this year ) that my feet got tired on long trad routes. I started doing all my ARC work in softer shoes and it made a big difference.

[hangboarderjon]

Yeah ARC training is generally where I assume that foot strength can be acquired most easily.

However I'm currently limited to my apartment and hangboard (no ARC climbing sessions possible) and even if I had access to climbing, the gyms in my area lack long traverses that are necessary for ARC sessions. I previously did laps on the automatic toprope belay systems, and this is useful, but limited to the routes that have an autobelay installed.

Regardless, this doesn't address the foundation of the question I am posing: Should foot strength be considered on equal terms with finger strength? Should I (and others) consider training foot/toe strength alongside finger strength?

All of the arguments that Mark/Mike make for climbers to train finger strength in the introductory chapters of their book apply equally to foot strength. I'm making the case the toe strength is as important to high-performance rock climbing as finger strength is.

[cozisco]

May 1, 2020 13:04:07 GMT -7 hangboarderjon said:

I'm making the case the toe strength is as important to high-performance rock climbing as finger strength is.

I'd disagree, but maybe that's just me. I've never felt like toe strength was a limiting factor, but I can think of countless routes and boulders where I felt limited by finger strength. Maybe I just have short toes/feet. Or maybe I don't climb enough on vert walls with dime edges. (When I do though, those dime edges feel more limiting as handholds than footholds.)

[hangboarderjon]

May 1, 2020 16:26:48 GMT -7 cozisco said:

May 1, 2020 13:04:07 GMT -7 hangboarderjon said:

I'm making the case the toe strength is as important to high-performance rock climbing as finger strength is.

I'd disagree, but maybe that's just me. I've never felt like toe strength was a limiting factor, but I can think of countless routes and boulders where I felt limited by finger strength. Maybe I just have short toes/feet. Or maybe I don't climb enough on vert walls with dime edges. (When I do though, those dime edges feel more limiting as handholds than footholds.)

I agree that on slabs, finger strength seems to be more limiting than toe strength. I argue that this apparent limiting factor is an illusion -- in fact, most of your weight should be on your feet, and if your feet feel insecure, you'll compensate for it by relying on your fingers. The compensation will make it appear that your fingers are the weak link.

Pushing this argument further though into more hypothetical lines of reasoning, if you were to modify your hands (with some kind of glove or hooks etc) in the way it is acceptable to modify our feet with shoes, then performance would be enhanced drastically under some conditions. Or in the opposite extreme, climbing barefooted would very quickly demonstrate how much more important foot strength is than finger strength.