Reclaim Your Pinky Toe

I've talked before about reclaiming your big toe.  Feet flat, raise your big toe off the floor while still keeping your other digits on the ground.  Also, vice versa, keep your big toe on the ground and raise the other digits off the ground.  All of these drills go back to getting back or keeping the motor control from the brain to the foot.

For me, it's meant less calf tension.  The next step is to reclaim the pinky toe.  The main muscle is the abductor digit minimi.  So the goal is to move the pinky toe sideways away from the foot.  Don't give up if at first nothing happens.  Keep trying.

I read once where Dan John, the philosophical strength coach, thought this was the magic of wearing Vibrams.  It slowly brought back the pinky toe function.  For him it relieved some hip pain.  The pinky is part of your lateral stability line.  So anything that gets more integrated in function will make the line, in this case lateral stability, stronger.

The abductor digit minimi is important to posture and even contributes to stability into the hip.  So nothing to be ignored, although your Orthopedic will tell you that it is not needed.  If we have something on our body, we should be able to consciously make it do what we want.  When it doesn't, I think we lose the kinesthetic awareness of that area.

Will it drive your deadlifit up in weight?  Probably not.  Will it create a better, more stable foot?  More then likely.  So reclaim your pinky toe.