The foot is a miracle of design. Each foot has 26 bones, 100’s of ligaments, muscles and tendons. All of these elements have to function together in a really precise way so that we can easily walk, run and do a whole range of actions. The foot is a perfectly tuned biomechanical masterpiece as it needs to co-ordinate all of the physiological structures in order that it can function properly and effortlessly to carry out those actions. The foot did evolve to have those characteristics on a soft surface and not wearing shoes, so a number of imperfections potentially crept in as feet was placed into footwear and was forced to walk and run on the hard concrete surfaces. Small defects that were not previously an issue did start to show up in those shoes and on those hard ground. It is this which is to blame for so many of the problems that health professionals see in the foot nowadays.
By way of example, one of those issues is a concept 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 need to work harder and the ligaments have a lot more stress on them. This may lead to pain in those structures and also the development of a progressive flat foot. If this force is higher, walking and running also requires more effort and can be very fatiguing. If that supination resistance force is too low, then it will be simple to raise the arch of the foot. This may result in more ankle sprains as it is so easy to tip the foot over to cause that. From this it should be clear that a fine balance is required between too much and too low amounts of force which is a good illustration of just what an engineering wonder the foot is and just how easy it is for something to go wrong.