2nd and 3rd to buckle and don't hold much weight - help please

Danny D

Barefooters
Nov 12, 2015
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Hello,

I am really interested in the idea of barefoot running/walking, but one issue is seriously holding me back. If you guys have any suggestions, please let me know. The fysio I talked to was useless. She had no suggestions for the toe, instead a strange love of orthotics which I politely declined

My toes are quite long, and I have trouble finding footwear. That, among many other reasons is why I want to get into barefoot running. The issue is that I was a heel striker in high heels with an extended heel to big toe stride. My toes got weak, especially in the left foot (right is fine). Its probably worth mentioning that the 2nd toe is a mortons toe My 2nd toe buckles with the joint nearest the toenail giving in and bending the wrong way round. Consequently, the joint further up bends too much, sometimes even at 90 degrees. 3rd and sometimes 4th toe mimic the behaviour of the 2nd toe. This leaves me with ankle pain and a lack of support for the foot.

Traditional exercises such as gripping a towel don't work because the toe buckles, instead I am trying to build muscle by bending the toes using fingers as resistance. I use toe spacers in shoes, and go barefoot as much as possible. Please advise, does anyone have any ideas on how to get the toe to hold weight or ideas about some kind of device which might help?

Cheers,

DD
 
I am alittle confused since the first toe being short is what is considered a mortons toe. If I understand this correctly, your first toe is just fine being longer. If the first toe was shorter, you would put more weight on the second and third and likely would develop what is called a mortons neuroma.

Aside from this clarification, do you have high arches or flat feet? While this is not likely the factor, it my be a factor. I am assuming that you are built asymmetrically since one foot has the problem and the other foot does not. Believe it or not, your problems can be in the calf, since the muscles that control the toes are located in there. The fact you cannot curl your toes and that you have ankle pain suggests that the entire leg and foot are involved, as well as the core and the lateral leg is likely very tight and stiff (typical in high arched people who are bowlegged, again not saying that this is you).

A good sports chiropractor may be a better place to begin. In my experience, lack of flexibility in the foot involves more than the foot and if the joints in the ankle are stiff, you are likely to get forefoot problems because of straining. If you want to post a photo of your feet or better yet, a video of you on a treadmill both from the side and the back, I can be alittle more accurate on my evaluation.

Hope that helps
 
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I am alittle confused since the first toe being short is what is considered a mortons toe. If I understand this correctly, your first toe is just fine being longer. If the first toe was shorter, you would put more weight on the second and third and likely would develop what is called a mortons neuroma.

Aside from this clarification, do you have high arches or flat feet? While this is not likely the factor, it my be a factor. I am assuming that you are built asymmetrically since one foot has the problem and the other foot does not. Believe it or not, your problems can be in the calf, since the muscles that control the toes are located in there. The fact you cannot curl your toes and that you have ankle pain suggests that the entire leg and foot are involved, as well as the core and the lateral leg is likely very tight and stiff (typical in high arched people who are bowlegged, again not saying that this is you).

A good sports chiropractor may be a better place to begin. In my experience, lack of flexibility in the foot involves more than the foot and if the joints in the ankle are stiff, you are likely to get forefoot problems because of straining. If you want to post a photo of your feet or better yet, a video of you on a treadmill both from the side and the back, I can be alittle more accurate on my evaluation.

Hope that helps
Thank you Dr. William.

I must chime in.

He said it's his 2nd toe that is the longest, and that is what is known as a Morton's Toe, which we know you know, of course. Morton's Toe and Morton's Neuroma have nothing to do with one another. They are really named after two different "Morton's" and two different conditions.

The number one cause of "Morton's Neuroma," which is really a nerve entrapment that causes scarring to the nerve, not a true neuroma/tumor, is the types of shoes we wear. Shoes that have an elevated heel force us to put our weight over our metatarsals, and shoes that have a narrow toe space cause our mets to compress our nerves. Those born with narrow spacing between the mets are prone to this condition when they wear the wrong types of shoes. If people would stay barefoot from birth, this condition would never develop, and we would never even know what MN is.
 
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In my personal experience, the smaller toes do not lend much to barefoot running. I did not find the towel grip exercise to be useful at all.

Dr. Mark does not focus on the smaller toes in his videos.


Smaller toes do not appear very active in this video either.

The ankle pain sounds like something that should get examined.
 
A big thank you for all of your time and answers

I may have misused the term 'mortons toe'. My big toe is the longest, but the 2nd metatarsal bone is as long or a tiny bit longer than the first metatarsal bone. I seem to have a rather bent bone between my knee and foot, but can stand up with my ankles and knees together . I overpronate, the right side of my body is more muscular than the left. As for arches, they are pretty normal. The middle bit of my forefoot is higher than either side of the forefoot, with a clear groove between the 2nd and 3rd toe (the 'highest' bart of the forefoot'). I spent most of last winter doing large amounts of skating skiing in slightly too small skiing shoes, probably with a pronated stance, sometimes with a 15kg rucksack. That will have played quite a large role in shaping my body. I didn't warm up, went skiing for 30k or running for 15k and had a beer on the sofa instead of stretching afterwards - very silly now in retrospect.

The toes curl fine and seem quite flexible. The right leg is fine. The issue is that the toes of the left leg don't seem to be able to go through the motion of taking a step without buckling (this isn't such an issue in shoes, where I seem to not use my toes much). I can grip the ground with toes 5-3, but toe 2 buckles when I apply pressure. The 2nd last pic is an exaggerated one, last one is closer to how it behaves when I take a step. I can stand on one leg fine with the toe in a normal position, but when I walk the 2nd toe buckles in, sometimes taking toes 3-4 down with it. This is my main issue, I think. On longer walks the joint on 2nd toe closest to the foot can get painful. The pain in ankle is on the medial side, behind the big ankle bone

I will go and see another fysio and a chiropractor if I can find one, but I'm highly interested in getting more ideas from you folks who have figured out that shoes may not be the most awesome invention ever. Also, I'll try just simply using the little toes less and relying more on forefoot/big toe

Sorry for the terrible quality of pictures, hope they are of use. If necessary I can get a better camera and upload more2015-11-18 22.37.09.jpg 2015-11-17 21.40.31.jpg2015-11-17 21.40.31.jpg2015-11-17 21.41.16.jpg2015-11-18 00.56.01.jpg2015-11-18 22.11.23.jpg2015-11-18 00.56.41.jpg2015-11-18 00.57.15.jpg
 
Morton's Toe is defined by the length of the first metatarsal bone being shorter than the second metatarsal's bone length, not the toe. You can bend your toes downward, and look at the whites of the knuckles to see which one is the longest.

We have a thread stickied in our Health forum dedicated to this condition if you need more support about MT.
 
The issue is that the toes of the left leg don't seem to be able to go through the motion of taking a step without buckling (this isn't such an issue in shoes, where I seem to not use my toes much). I can grip the ground with toes 5-3, but toe 2 buckles when I apply pressure. The 2nd last pic is an exaggerated one, last one is closer to how it behaves when I take a step. I can stand on one leg fine with the toe in a normal position, but when I walk the 2nd toe buckles in, sometimes taking toes 3-4 down with it. This is my main issue, I think.View attachment 6542View attachment 6543
Umm, I think my smaller toes do this, too. I walk and run barefoot perfectly fine.


On longer walks the joint on 2nd toe closest to the foot can get painful. The pain in ankle is on the medial side, behind the big ankle bone
These sound like things that should get checked out.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the ideas and help

Sid, I'm glad that you have it figured out and that the little toes buckling isn't an issue. As for me, I think it is. My big toe bears all the weight and turns inward, giving my foot a somewhat unnatural shape. I was quite happy walking and trying short bursts of running in the forest in my vibrams, but now that there is plenty of snow on the ground I'm stuck with hard surfaces. Pavement has never really worked for me, even in shoes. I think I'll focus on swimming, yoga ect and restart going barefoot (this time ditching the vibrams) once the forest is an option.
 
Problem solved, I think/hope.

Fysio number 2 had nothing much to say on the ankle pain. Also, I literally got nothing from him when I asked about correcting how the toes function. Instead, the highly professional gentleman with 30 years of experience suggested that I acquire a shoe with a heel drop of 2-3cm "It's good for pronation to elevate the heel, you see". Into that shoe we should stick an orthotic with arch support and the medial side of heel and the end of first metatarsal elevated. What a great way to add pressure to my 5th little hammer toe and shorten my tendons. What I found most hilarious was his disapproval of using toe spacers. "Your toes are used to being in a certain way, you can't just start messing about with that". I guess he was eyeing me up as a potential lifetime customer.

The combination of Feelmax Kuuva barefoot boots and "toe orthotics" (see picture below) seem to work. The pain in the ankle is still there to some extent, but instead of dragging my feet and feeling a bit off balance, I have been walking silently as a ninja. I recommend buying a pile of silicone toe spacers and using them in a wide barefoot boot if your toes don't function properly.

Going to keep swimming, and increase the amount of barefoot walking. I vowed not to run before I can run barefoot, looking forward to getting into that in the distant future.

Cheers folks,

Danny

2015-11-28 17.46.26.jpg
 
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