GetFit Top Tip

My wife tells me these things to me, as I am clearly not “in” with the latest fashion news… In fact by the time I finish writing this post high heel shoes will be back in again.

But I was happy to hear that flat shoes for females are all the rage, possibly down to the stunning Carla Bruni wearing flats so beautifully so she doesn’t tower over French President Sarkozy. But there does seem to be a fair amount of disagreement of the health benefits of flat shoes…

I have literally just had an argument with the front desk girl at “The Gym”, she claims her doctor says that you need about 2cm of heel on your shoes for good healthy muscles in the calf and ankle. Various “experts” on the internet claim you need a shoe with good support for the arch, and switching from heels to flats can cause excessive achilles strain.

Without adding to add more confusion to the debate, a healthy dose of common sense is needed I think.

You see the body has been designed in a specific way, if we were meant to walk around on our tip toes all day, then our feet would have been shaped that way, ie. with a heel that is 10cm bigger than it is currently.

Unfortunately trying to argue the point with many of my clients is like pulling teeth, regardless of the evidence i can provide to show the massive negative impact heels have on your posture, causing all manner of problems such as knee, hip and back pain.

Claims that flats will put strain on the achilles is actually very true if you are coming straight from wearing 4 inch “spikes”, your calf muscles will be shortened to such a degree that the extra pull on the tendon that attaches to the bottom of your foot will cause pain.

So what are the benefits of wearing “Carla’s” flats

• The biggest benefit is improvements in posture
• Lesser risk of knee and back pain
• Greater flexibility in the ankle joint

I also have a theory that says that wearing heels causes you to have a stomach bulge! Given the position your ankles and knees are forced into when wearing heels, the pelvis needs to compensate by tilting forward, pushing your abdominals and stomach forward giving the appearance of a bulging stomach!!!

Now at the risk of writing the most unpopular BLOG post in history, I am going to sign off now and leave it up to you to see some common sense when it comes to wearing heels!

Tim

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1. Jess Says:
   May 9th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

   Tim, You are very BRAVE man:)

   But I am in total agreement!

   Jess

2. rita berg Says:
   May 9th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

   Tim youuuuuu are a man