Podiatrist · Specialist in Biomechanics · Founder of VOLKAN
"Not every movement that draws attention needs to be corrected. Sometimes it is precisely the movement that allows you to walk."
"I have been told that I pronate a lot"
It is a phrase that I hear constantly.
Many patients come in worried because someone has told them they are pronators.
Some even believe that this word explains all their pain.
And the first thing I usually do is reassure them.
Pronation is not an illness.
In fact, if your foot were not able to pronate, walking would be much more difficult.
So… what is pronation?
Every time we take a step, the foot needs to adapt to the ground.
To achieve this, it performs a small set of movements that we know as pronation.
Thanks to it, the foot stops behaving like a rigid structure and becomes more flexible.
This allows it to absorb some of the impact and adapt to small irregularities in the terrain.
It is a brilliant mechanism.
Without it, walking on an imperfect surface would be much less efficient.
Pronation is not a mistake of the body.
It is a solution created by evolution.
The problem is not usually pronation.
Imagine the suspension of a car.
Its function is to cushion the irregularities of the terrain.
No one would think that a suspension is bad because it compresses.
The problem would arise if it never stopped compressing.
Or if it remained completely blocked.
With pronation, something similar happens.
It doesn't matter only how much a foot pronates.
What matters is when it starts to pronate, how long it stays doing so, and if afterward it is able to regain the stability needed to propel the body.
That's why, in biomechanics, talking only about "much" or "little" pronation says very little.
What is really important is to understand how it participates within the whole movement.
What does this have to do with barefoot?
Many people believe that barefoot shoes are meant to eliminate pronation.
And that is not true.
Pronation will continue to exist because it is part of the normal functioning of the foot.
What a shoe that respects the anatomy and mobility of the foot can do is allow that movement to occur with less external interference.
It does not force the foot to pronate.
It does not prevent it from doing so.
It simply tries not to hinder a mechanism that the body itself uses naturally.
That's why the goal should never be to "correct all pronation."
The goal is to understand if that pronation is helping the movement… or if it has stopped doing so.
What I see every day in consultation
I often explore runners with very evident pronation who have never had an injury related to it.
And also people whose pronation barely draws attention, but have recurring discomfort.
That reminds me every day that the body does not function by labels.
It functions by strategies.
The question is not:
"How much pronate?"
The question is:
"Does that strategy allow you to walk, run, and adapt to loads efficiently?"
When we change the question, the way we treat the patient also changes.
What you can do from today
If you have ever been told that you are a pronator, do not just stick to that label.
Ask something more important.
Why do they consider that pronation is relevant?
Is it related to your symptoms?
Or do they simply describe a way of moving?
In biomechanics, naming a movement does not mean finding the cause of the problem.
🔬 In a sentence
Pronation is not a defect of the foot. It is a strategy that allows adapting to the terrain.
The most important idea
A foot that never pronates would be as inefficient as one unable to regain stability when it is time to push off.
Health does not consist of eliminating movements.
It consists of having each movement appear when it is necessary.
And pronation is one of the best examples.
A question to reflect on
The next time you hear the word "pronator," ask yourself:
Are they describing how my foot moves… or have they really demonstrated that this movement is the source of my problem?
In the next article…
For years we were taught to observe the foot almost in isolation.
But there is a much more interesting question.
Can a problem in the hip, knee, or even in the trunk change the way our feet strike the ground?
We will discover why the foot almost never works alone and why, in biomechanics, looking only down can cause us to overlook the true cause of the problem.