The foot is a miracle of design. Each foot has 26 bones, 100’s of ligaments, muscles and tendons. Most of these structures have to function alongside one another in a very precise way so that we can walk, run and perform a whole range of activities. The foot is a finely tuned biomechanical masterpiece of design as it has to co-ordinate all those physiological structures so that it can function properly and effortlessly to undertake those activities. The foot did evolve to get those characteristics on a soft ground rather than wearing shoes, so several imperfections possibly crept in as feet was placed into shoes and was forced to walk and run on the hard concrete surfaces. Small faults that were not previously an issue did start to show up in those shoes and on those hard surfaces. It is this that is to blame for so many of the conditions that health professionals see in the foot nowadays.
For instance, one of those issues is a notion referred to as supination resistance. This is viewed as the force that is required to lift the arch of the foot. In the event that force is high, then the muscles and tendons must work harder and the ligaments have a lot more strain on them. This may lead to pain in those structures and the development of a progressive flat foot. If that force is high, running and walking also needs more energy and could be really fatiguing. If that supination resistance force is too low, then it is going to be easy to raise the arch of the foot. This might result in more ankle sprains as it is so easy to tip the foot over to cause that. From this it should be obvious that a fine balance is necessary between too high and too low amounts of force which is a great demonstration of precisely what an engineering wonder the foot is and just how simple it is for something to go wrong.