Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"When one part of the body changes, no other remains exactly the same."
"What do my foot and my back have to do with each other?"
It's a completely logical question.
A patient comes in with heel pain.
After examining them, we talk about balance.
About the mobility of the hip.
About the way of walking.
About sleep.
About the stress that has been building up for months.
And then the doubt arises.
—But… I came in for my foot.
I understand perfectly.
For many years we have learned to divide the body into compartments.
The orthopedic surgeon looks at the bone.
The physiotherapist works on the muscle.
The podiatrist observes the foot.
The dentist looks at the mouth.
Each professional studies one part.
But the organism has never functioned that way.
The body does not understand specialties.
It understands relationships.
No movement belongs to a single structure.
Think of something as simple as taking a step.
The foot contacts the ground.
The leg muscles respond.
The knee absorbs part of the load.
The hip organizes stability.
The trunk maintains balance.
The arms accompany the movement.
The eyes provide spatial references.
The vestibular system informs about the position of the head.
The brain integrates all that information in just a few milliseconds.
And then the next step appears.
Where does that movement really begin?
In the foot?
In the brain?
In the eyes?
The answer is probably something else.
It starts in the conversation they all have.
Information constantly travels
The organism never stops exchanging information.
The receptors in the foot inform about the surface.
The eyes describe the environment.
The inner ear detects accelerations.
The muscles communicate their level of tension.
The joints inform about their position.
The brain compares all that information with previous experiences and builds a response.
It does not work with isolated data.
It works with relationships.
Modern biomechanics no longer studies only forces and angles.
It studies systems that continuously cooperate.
Changing a part modifies the whole
Imagine that you walk barefoot on the sand.
The foot immediately changes its way of supporting itself.
But not only the foot changes.
The knee modifies its behavior.
The hip reorganizes stability.
The trunk makes small adjustments.
The speed decreases.
The equilibrium works more.
Even the breathing tends to become a bit more measured.
There is no isolated change.
There is a reorganization of the entire system.
That happens constantly.
Although we are almost never aware.
The mistake of looking for a single cause
Many times we look for a simple explanation for complex problems.
We want to find "the responsible muscle."
"The guilty joint."
"The bone that causes everything."
However, the organism rarely functions with a single cause.
Most times we find a combination of factors.
Load.
Sleep.
Stress.
Movement.
Previous experiences.
Physical condition.
Confidence.
Context.
Everyone participates.
That does not make biomechanics more complicated.
It makes it more real.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
A lot.
Reducing barefoot to a simple change of footwear would be staying on the surface.
When a foot starts to receive more information from the ground, it does not only change the foot.
The brain has new data.
The equilibrium is reorganized.
The gait can be modified.
The musculature participates differently.
Even it changes the perception of movement.
It is not a shoe acting on a foot.
It is a different information modifying an entire system.
That’s why important changes rarely occur only where we look.
What I see every day in consultation
Over time I have stopped asking myself only:
—Where does it hurt?
Now I try to ask another question.
—What conversation of the organism has stopped functioning as before?
Sometimes the answer is close to the pain.
Other times it appears much further away.
Not because there is a magical chain of compensations.
But because movement always arises from the collaboration between many systems.
When we understand that collaboration, treatment stops focusing only on one structure.
It starts to help the organism reorganize the whole.
What you can do from today
The next time a discomfort appears, avoid thinking only about the area where you feel it.
Ask yourself a broader question.
What has changed in my life over the past few weeks?
Do I sleep the same?
Do I move the same?
Do I work the same?
Am I more worried?
Have I reduced my activity?
Have I changed my footwear?
Many times the answer is not exactly where the symptom appears.
It is in the context surrounding the organism.
And understanding that context often provides much more information than looking for a single isolated cause.
🔬 In a sentence
Movement does not belong to a structure. It is the result of the cooperation between many systems working at the same time.
The most important idea
The human body does not function like a machine made up of independent parts.
It functions like an extraordinarily coordinated network.
Each system influences the others.
Each change generates new adaptations.
That’s why understanding biomechanics is not just about knowing muscles, bones, or joints.
It’s about understanding the relationships they maintain with each other.
We do not treat feet.
We do not treat knees.
We do not treat backs.
We treat whole organisms trying to solve the same challenge:
To keep moving in the best possible way with the resources they have at any given moment.
A question to reflect on
Think about the last time your body changed in some significant way.
An injury.
A pregnancy.
A period of stress.
A phase of sedentarism.
A new sport.
What other parts of your life changed at the same time, even if at first they didn’t seem related?
In the next article…
So far we have talked about the organism as an intelligent network that learns, adapts, and continuously reorganizes its movement.
But there is one question that many patients ask me even before sitting down on the examination table.
"What footwear is the best?"
For years the answer seemed simple.
Today we know that there is no perfect shoe for all people, all terrains, and all moments.
In the next chapter we will start to dismantle one of the great myths of the footwear world: the idea that there is an ideal sneaker.
We will discover that, just like with movement, the best footwear is not the most famous, the most expensive, or the most minimalist. It is the one that best adapts to the person, the context, and the objective of that moment.