How to keep your feet happy at the gym post lockdown:
Be kind to your feet. As life slowly returns back to normal; we may be super eager to get back into the gym to reach our personal goals. I am keen to get back into the rhythm of things and increase my strength in deadlifts. Below are some general strategies that may help you ease into things in a comfortable but challenging manner and help reduce injury risk.
Re-evaluate your goals
Sit down and brainstorm what short term and long term goals you want to achieve. This may have changed in the last 3 months and that’s completely ok! Do you need someone to help you reach your goals? A coach? A health professional to review previous injuries/your capacity? Do you need help to find a start point?
Find the right dose for you
Similar to taking medicine we want to do the right amount of exercise/rehab for the right period of time. Slowly easing back into training is usually a good start.
Pre lockdown you may be squatting 100kg. One idea is to explore how that intensity is for you at 50%(50kg) for that given day and work up from there. A general rule for exercise to keep the exercise challenging but not max out. This can be achieved by keeping 3 repetitions left in your tank. 
Listen to your body to manage fatigue
Our schedules can be quite jam packed with increased hours at work, social outings with friends, different sleeping patterns or signing up to a new gym etc. These stressors can change day by day which can affect how you feel on that given day. If your body is quite sore or you feel fatigue; either consider a rest day or reduce overall intensity by 10-15%. This can assist in your overall recovery, so you can be more consistent with planning out how many days you may need to rest before training again.
Finding the right Footwear for your activity demands
As a general rule we want to find a shoe that suits your activity, the shoe be the right size/width/depth for your foot shape. Keep in mind different brands will have different size/width/depths. So it’s best to try on the shoe to help you decide if it’s the right fit for you. Typically the length will be categorised as a number and the width will be categorised as a letter (e.g. 6C).
Strength and conditioning the foot
This is usually overlooked! We want to condition our feet for the given task that helps you reach your goals which will vary from person to person. As we strengthen and condition our feet this will allow our body to have a higher tolerance to loads to increase our base line capacity.
I will be going through some options to explore if you are interested in strengthening your feet in the next blog.
If you have any questions in regards to this blog or any questions about your feet, feel free to call (02) 9252 2825 and we are happy to help.
Post by: Podiatrist Richard Ching
