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If you’ve played sports and you over-pronate, you may notice that you have stiff turf toe or bunions.

In my experience turf toe has been exacerbated during individual instances of trauma to the metatarsophalangeal joint during athletics.

Fixing my gait reduces pain and swelling as well as the likelihood of a future injury during sports.

This link shows how trauma to the joint happens, and how it can cause chronic injuries like turf toe and bunions: https://www.selectmedical.com/media-center/news-and-articles/articles/tackling-turf-toe-what-it-is-and-why-it-hurts-so-badly

Preventing metatarsophalangeal trauma

Here are holistic ways that I have been able to reduce foot pain and improve overall strength of lower extremities as well as balance. In my opinion the best things are:

1. Re-learning gait patterns as described below
2. Dynamic stretching (youtube it)
3. Improve full body posture
4. Improve physical fitness: One exercise anyone can try at home is standing on one foot.
5. Don’t wear hyper-narrow or pointy dress shoes.
6. During athletics remove cleats or sport-specific shoes immediately after practice / game is over. If you’re a climber, for example, take off your climbing shoes between climbs.

On the topic of shoes… wide and zero-drop shoes are going viral, but the real problem is gait, not shoes.

In my opinion there’s no need to wear goofy clown looking wide toe-box shoes, unless you just want to be more comfortable on a long flight or something. As long as your shoes are wide enough, normal shoes are fine.

It might not hurt to get EE wide shoes, such as the Brooks Ghost 17, which come in various sizes and wide sizes, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

However, if you insist on trying zero drop wide box shoes, I recommend these made by WHITIN, because they are actually comfortable, look ok, and I’ve had mine for over a year and they’re quite durable. I wear them on long flights and sometimes to the gym.

Once you try zero drop clown shoes like I did, you will quickly realize that they don’t make a difference.

Wide shoes aside, if the problem is gait, then let’s talk about how to walk.

Improve the gait pattern

Turf toe and bunions tends to be a chronic injury associated with duck-footed gait patterns.

I do not believe pigeon-toed walkers get bunions normally. I could be wrong, but this is what I know from a physics standpoint based on how the force is spread across the transverse arch.

Avoid over-pronation, or duck-walking, which causes impact and trauma to the first metatarsophalangeal joint (big toe) joint.

How to walk

1. Analyze your gait: Look at the bottoms of your shoes and the wear patterns on the soles of your shoes. This link has a good depiction of various wear-patterns you might have on your shoes: https://www.totalfootcarenrv.com/footware.html
2. If you are duck footed, stop walking that way. You need to change your musculature, tendons, and bones. It will not happen overnight.
3. When you walk your shoes should point straight, not outward or inward. 
4. During the push-off phase of your gait cycle, the force should be perpendicular to your transverse arch.
5. The angle of your transverse arch will vary based on the relative lengths of your 1st and lesser metatarsal bones. The more angle in your transverse arch you have, the more supination your foot should have during the push-off gait phase only. Learn what supination vs. pronation mean here: https://orthoflexx.com/blogs/news/the-difference-between-supination-and-pronation)

What happens to your foot when you walk incorrectly:

Overpronation and duck walking makes your 1st metatarsal bone (the bone connected to your big toe) want to get shorter.

But since it cannot get shorter, your 1st metatarsal bone will tend to press inward, away from the lesser metatarsal bones. As a result of this gap your proximal phalanx will angle in the other direction to compensate.

Overpronation causes the perceived length of your 1st metatarsal bone to be longer than it actually is.

When you change how you walk such that your back foot presses perpendicular to your transverse arch, and the perceived length of your 1st and lesser-metatarsal bones are all equal.

During each step, you want equal weight distribution across each of your metatarsal bones.

Thus, the force is laterally spread evenly across your foot, preventing over exertion or trauma to any one articulation.

This link covers some good info on the gait cycle: https://www.fasthewoodlands.com/post/the-styles-of-walking-running

That’s everything I know, for now.