Fallen arch

[dan_b]

After spending far too long yesterday evening with a frame tool and a mirror, I think I have found the following:

If I have no weight on my left leg, and swing it backwards and forwards from the knee (e.g. while sitting on a table) the foot travels straight forwards and backwards and the toes point straight ahead (or near enough).

If I put  a skate on and stand on it, when I bend the knee it bends inwards.  Unlike my right leg, which still points straight ahead.

After some experimentation I found that when standing on a wedge (sloping downward to the left) my knee bends in the more usual direction, and it didn't take much longer after that to realise that my left foot is - not actually flat, but doesn't have much of an arch. This may help to explain a whole bunch of things including why I find it so much harder to balance on that foot than the other one.  The arch reforms when the foot is unweighted, but disappears under pressure.

I don't know how long this has been the case for.  It seems odd that I've never previously noticed that more of my left foot touches the floor when I walk than the right foot, but I've never been looking out for it before...

So, assuming I'm right (this is all self-diagnosis at this point, and we know how accurate that can be in the hands of a fully fledged hypochondriac) I should probably look for some kind of arch support to get me through the next few weeks (thinking here about Sardinia and how nice it would be to survive the week and still have working ankles at the end) and maybe, in the long term, custom boots.  Is this the sort of thing with which boot makers are familiar?  Do they take your foot impression when you're standing on the foot or when it's unloaded?  The Bont FAQ says that you should stand on the orthotic while wearing the "Sox" so that the shape of it will become part of the boot, so they at least seem to have thought about it.

[Adam B(GMF)]

I've got a book called Conditioning for Outdoor Fitness that goes into this sort of thing and has serval tests that you can do at home - available for lend if wanted

[Michi]

[Markus]

did you check you hip position to ensure you did the same thing on either side? ie if you rotate your right hip forwards a bit then the line of your knee-bend should change, too.
I don't say that's your problem, but worth a look, asymmetric hip position is something I've seen with a number of students before