What is supination resistance in the foot?

The foot is a masterpiece of design. Each foot has 26 bones, 100’s of ligaments, muscles and tendons. Many of these structures need to function alongside one another in a very precise way to ensure that we can walk, run and perform a whole range of activities. The foot is a finely tuned biomechanical masterpiece as it must co-ordinate all those functional structures in order that it can function properly and effortlessly to perform those activities. The foot did evolve to get those capabilities on a soft surface and not wearing shoes, so a number of flaws potentially crept in as feet was put into footwear and it was forced to walk and run on the hard cement surfaces. Small weaknesses that were not previously an issue started to show up in those shoes and on those hard ground. It is this that is responsible for so many of the conditions that health professionals see in the foot nowadays.

For example, one of those issues is a concept referred to as supination resistance. This is considered as the force that's required to lift the arch of the foot. If that force is higher, then the muscles and tendons have to work harder and the ligaments have more stress on them. This can lead to pain in those structures and also the development of a progressive flat foot. If this force is high, walking and running also requires more effort and could be really fatiguing. If that supination resistance force is too low, then it will likely be simple to raise the arch of the foot. This can result in more ankle sprains because it is really easy to tip the foot over to cause that. From this it ought to be clear that a fine balance is needed between too much and too low amounts of force which is a great illustration of just what an engineering miracle the foot is and just how easy it is for something to go wrong.