Flat feet was always something that harmed my badminton and sports performance significantly. I first experienced the real pain of having flat feet while doing hurdles during my middle school years where I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my foot making me limp for the rest of the day. The pain continued to affect and made it difficult for me to enjoy sports such as badminton.
As such, I’ve made this post to help some readers learn about exercises and remedies they could try to treat flat feet to allow them to play badminton to their fullest extent.
Because I am not a certified doctor or physiotherapist, I must make a disclaimer here. Everything I say here should be subject to judgment as it comes from my personal experience, whatever my doctors told me, or research into this topic. The exercises and remedies I provide are not guaranteed to work. Results vary from person to person.
With the disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into some exercises and remedies to treat flat feet!
What Are Flat Feet
First, we need an understanding of flat feet. People with flat feet have either no arch or a low arch in their feet. Healthy people will usually have a gap beneath the inner part of the foot when a person stands. Ankles will also look like they’re collapsed inwards for a flat-footed person as well.
It’s usually genetic or created by walking in shoes with no arch support or walking in a way that puts pressure onto the inside of your feet.
The arch provides a spring to your step and helps distribute body weight across the feet and legs. The arches need to be both sturdy and flexible to adapt to stress and allow you to walk on a variety of surfaces. People with flat feet are lacking the optimal structure of the arch and thus, may feel pain or imbalance while walking or playing sports.
Flat feet never really affected myself until I was doing strenuous activities such as playing badminton or in my previous example, running hurdles. That’s when I felt sharp pains along the arch of my feet and could barely walk.
Other symptoms of flat feet may be a pain in the calves, knees, or other lower body joints. Because of the low arch, people with flat feet might experience strained muscles and connecting ligaments because of their inability to distribute weight evenly. These are symptoms that I have personally felt, and they really hurt the length at which I can perform to the best of my ability in badminton.
Another annoying part of flat feet is the rate at which my shoes are wearing out. Every time I get new shoes, I can always see the inner feet area of my shoes kind of compress or rub off because of the pressure in my inner feet section. To avoid this problem, I often tried to walk by forcibly putting pressure onto the outer sides of my feet only to find that pain is caused in the outer sections.
Flat feet can really affect your performance in any sport or activity as pain will often stop you from playing longer and enjoying activities to the best you can. Luckily, there are some exercises and remedies you can try to treat flat feet.
Calf Stretches
One of the exercises my doctor recommended to me when I came to him about my flat feet was to do calf stretches. Flat feet are often caused by weak calf muscles that fail to pull the arch up. Thus doing some calf stretches can increase the strength of the muscles and also reform the shape to hold the arch in position.
How should we do these calf stretches though?
My doctor recommended me to stand on a stair step with the heels hanging off the edge and then pushing your heels down until you feel a stretch. Hold the position for about 10 seconds or so and then let up. Then do it again for 3-5 sets.
After doing this, my arch has improved slightly, and my calves have felt a lot more flexible allowing me to not only play longer but also better and faster as well.
With this kind of exercise, I also like to mix in some calf raises as well to improve calf strength and thus, the explosion of your vertical jump. Basically, after you lower your heel for a few seconds, raise your heel above the stair step and hold that position for a few seconds and then go back down.
Another more intense variation which focuses more on strengthening your calves is to go up and down a lot faster. Just get rid of the holding the position part and go up and down for this kind of training. You can even add weights to this kind of exercises.
Another calf stretch exercise you could do is where you sit down with one leg extended and bend over and try to reach for your toes. Do this for 10 seconds and then switch to your other leg. If you’re flexible enough and you can touch your toes, try pulling your toes back. This kind of stretch is also part of the standard warm-up exercises for badminton.
There are many more types of calf stretches you could do, and they’re all excellent for strengthening your calves and raising your arch.
Rolling A Tennis Ball
Another remedy for flat feet is rolling a tennis ball under your arch. This one is supposed to push your arch up from below, and it generally feels terrific.
To do this one, grab a tennis ball, or golf ball, and put it under your foot where the arch is. And then you can just roll it around with your feet for some time.
What I like about this exercise is that you can do it while watching TV, working on your computer, or just about anytime you’re sitting down. As someone who works on his computer every day for hours on end, I find this exercise helps me to keep my blood flow up and keep moving.
Toe Curls
Toe curls are something that I recently looked up and tried. This exercise strengthens the muscles around the arch and pushes the arch up.
To do this exercise, grab a towel and lay it onto the floor. Then put your foot on the sheet and curl your toes towards yourself. You should see the towel scrunch up. Then you push your toes back to the original position and repeat.
With this exercise, you can also try it with some weights for further strengthening. Grab a few weights or heavy objects and put it onto the towel. Then try the exercise again.
Acupuncture
This is something that I haven’t seen on any sites yet. It’s also something that only works short term and something that people often have controversial views on.
If you don’t know what acupuncture is, it’s an ancient Chinese system of healing where doctors put thin needles targeting pressure points to relieve pressure from them.
I tried acupuncture once on my feet, and they did work for a moment. For the rest of the night, I was pain-free in the feet and could walk perfectly fine. But the very next day, the pain came back.
So this is something that’s definitely hit or miss, but I wanted to include it because it did work temporarily and could potentially work more depending on the person.
Insoles and Arch Supports
Of course, these exercises may help remedy flat feet, but it won’t necessarily get rid of it. Flat feet is tough, if not impossible, to get rid of. However, there is a solution known as orthotics or specially designed insoles for your feet.
This is one treatment that does cost money though, but it is well worth it if you find flat feet discomforting you a ton.
What you want to do with insoles and arch supports is to buy one and put it in your shoes. Then you wear the shoes and walk around. That’s it!
Here are some recommendations:
Unfortunately, I haven’t had too much experience with many different types of insoles other than Dr. Scholl’s and nor have I tried putting insoles in badminton shoes yet. If you would like me to try it out and put a blog post out, definitely tell me in the comment section down below!
Even though I listed some supports linking to Amazon here, I don’t actually recommend going out and buying one online without consulting a doctor or a person of expertise. You may get insoles that don’t actually help you at all or maybe even harm you. Definitely, check with someone or test insoles out first.
Another option I’ve seen is getting a custom shoe tailored to you. My grandpa has done this method before, and it has undoubtedly helped to walk around longer. It is quite expensive though, and usually, it doesn’t come with options to tailor sports shoes such as badminton court shoes.
Conclusion
I hope this post helps! I have definitely seen more exercises and treatments for flat feet, but I haven’t necessarily tested them out or had experience with them which is why I didn’t list them down. There are things like massages and therapy which could work as well.
Let me know in the comment section down below if you have had any experiences with other flat feet remedies!
Before I go off and end this post, I just want to make the disclaimer that I’m not a certified doctor again. And as such, you should take my words lightly as we are not responsible for any damage caused by these exercises. Be careful!
Anyways, do you have any questions or comments? I would love to hear your opinion! Please leave your comments in the comment section and have a great day!
I recently had a very bad foot pain that I put down to a fallen arch. Simply because that was where the pain was focussed. I limped about painfully for a few weeks and it got better if it’s own accord. Could this have been a fallen arch or something else? Can a fallen arch ‘get better’? I’m sure it’s something that happens to people all the time but I’d just like to know if I can expect it to happen again. If it does though, at least I have your exercises and remedies to help me out. Great post thank you.
You actually had the same problems that I’ve had before. I had that sharp pain hit me around the arch a while back but then it just slowly got better by itself. For the exact reason, I’m not sure, but I do believe that the muscles got more used to the fallen arch and thus relaxed itself. But it is something that will come back. Occasionally, I would still feel the pain if I land awkwardly on my feet.
I learned so much about flat feet in this article. I always thought that nothing could be done about it. I’m happy to hear that I was wrong. As a child, I was teased mercilessly about having flat feet. After coming to the states I found out that I did not have flat feet. I did have problems with shoes but that was not due to flat feet. There were other problems. I have none of the problems that you mentioned in your article. My husband, however, has a lot of what you discussed. Such as knee pains etc. He tried Dr. Scholl’s which worked for a while, probably two weeks then sadly he started complaining again. He gave up thinking it’s no use. I would definitely have him read this article. You gave multiple solutions which I think could help. Hopefully, he’s not too old to receive the benefits.
I’m glad to hear that! Even as an older person, doing these exercises will still help comfort the feet. It might not be able to return them back to a good arch but it will feel better. Your comment actually reminded me of something I forgot to mention which was that the insoles sometimes stop working after a little bit. I personally felt the same way after using a Dr. Scholl’s insole. I will do some more research and see what other insoles or supports there are to hopefully provide some more options. For now, getting custom tailored shoes still might be a good option although a bit expensive.
I never realized that people with flat feet might have such issues! I just kind of assumed it was like the funny genetic toe webbing I have with my second and third toes, just there, you know? But it makes sense! That said, I walk a lot for my work and I’ve tried insoles for just regular foot pain. Eh, I’m not a big fan. I’m not sure if it’s how I walk or what, but they don’t really stay where they’re supposed to! I would imagine they’re more important for people with flat feet to have a good arch supporting insole, so while this has nothing to do with flat feet or badminton, do you have a trick to making them STAY where they’re supposed to? I’ve tried not cutting them as much, cutting them more, putting sticky stuff on the heel. I always just give up on them. I don’t remember if the brands I’ve tried were Dr. Shoals or what. I do agree that insoles help out a TON for my problem, if I could get them to stay! Thanks for the article!
I’ve had the problem of the insoles moving around too and it does get annoying. What I found works the best is to get better fitting shoes. So this means, when you’re buying shoes, try the shoes on with your insole. You should get a snug fit that generally limits the movement of the sole. If it still doesn’t work, you could get custom tailored shoes although I don’t know how beneficial it would be for your webbed toes scenario.
Firstly, thanks for putting out this post. Its a new insight and very informative. I don’t play badminton but I take part in hurdles and long distance running at leisure until few months back that the pains became very unbearable for me that I had to quit. I got to know I have flat foots but I didn’t bother to make findings about it before I quit due to work related tasks. Even though I had this pains once in a while now, I didn’t know it could be this simply treated. The exercises seems very easy to attempt and I would be more than glad to give it a go.
if I’m not asking too big, would you please try the insoles in your badminton shoes and put a post on it. I want to know how it feels and the possibilities of me trying them in my spikes.
I’m glad this article has been insightful for you! It’s no problem for me to try the insoles in my badminton shoes. IN fact, it’ll be beneficial to all of us as we figure out if it helps or not and if it does help, well my performance will certainly jump up. I’ll link the post here once I try it out!
Here’s the new post about putting insoles in badminton shoes if you’re still interested.
I bookmarked this article. such a nice information.
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoy the content.
I am not sure about this but your blog made me clear every concept. Thanks for sharing.
Yep, glad it helped!
Thanks for sharing such an informative post. An article like this really helps a lot to the audience like me since you have defined every information in order to understand easily.
Thank you for commenting!